Game Over
by Sgt. Griff
Summary: Within the red haze a white shines out, and life can continue again. Though drought with danger, strife and death they will hold onto it with all their might. Why? Because they have nothing else to lose. Yadayadacharsleftyadayadableepleblooblapblippitybl oodiddlydee. What? What'd you expect me to write?
1. Chapter 1

**The Obligatory Author's Note**

Nothing.

Why would I say anything and stop you from reading?

So go, read on.

* * *

**A prologue of sorts**

* * *

He never thought of his father as a bad man.

Not really.

Given his position, between saving the Earth and watching it burn before his eyes, there had been no time for thinking.

Sorry.

There had been all too much time for thinking. Thinking about the end, thinking about the start.

Thinking about the colour red.

There was something about it. Face down on a bloodied beach it was all around him, he breathed and lived surrounded by it. Simply watching the water rush in from beneath him with each wave.

The colour is a thinkable one, he decided. Nothing to be excited about.

The tide rolled by one last time as he smelt the sea breeze, dead and cold but somehow alive, living and breathing in itself, somehow through the surface of blood he felt something.

A thought? A plea?

Whatever it was, it was urgent, it was confused.

It was getting angrier.

Before his eyes, all the colours of his world faded, the smiling half head of his friend, the dismembered pale limbs severed from_ its _body, they fade and bleach out, and in their place the white creeps in. And his world is lost. No more feeling of red water beneath his cheek. No more salty breeze invading his mouth.

All there is is whiteness.

_Cowardice_.

* * *

Dressed in rags and wet with sweat, killed by leisure and resussitated by endless liabilities and problems. Its mind pounded with thoughts and dreams, the red sea's only ability.

Thinking.

The collective consciousness of human minds and souls could only think, a quadriplegic stewing inside its own skin. A thousand minds swelled with confusion and self pity, a few knew the truth, and their minds (for their bodies were nonexistent) thought of regret. It would go mad in the end, in the end the human race would fall apart.

_Instrumentality failed. _Sighed one of many. _Third impact ended all sentient-_

_Individual. _Interrupted another.

_-life. All that can happen is the rebirth of the world._

_We destroyed it-_

_But we shan't herald its rebirth._

_Rebirth is simply a concept. Planets cannot be reborn._

_The destruction of a star is not dissimilar to the birth of a nebula._

_And so death is the birth of destruction?_

_And so destruction brings both sadness in death and happiness in life._

Thinking?

Conversations floated between each former human, gradually thawing the frozen bounds of human construction. Gradually making yield the spirit of man.

I_n the loss of physical form, we did not lose our souls, we did not die._

_We cannot die._

_Cannot die._

_Cannot die._

_Die._

_Die._

_Death._

_Rebirth._

_Destruction._

_Life._

_Humanity_.

The Sea had no mouth. And it screamed.

We screamed.

* * *

Losing an eye had been fine.

Losing both had not been fine.

How could you wear two eyepatches? What would people think? The whole situation did little to prop up her ego.

Even if the world crept back into her mind, and her existence became justified it wouldn't bring back her eyes. She was nothing without sight, without her looks, as she put it. She always put it silently, silently pleading away the rotten scraps of her remaining pride.

Though she lay on the same beach, she remained inside herself. Wrapped up in a web spun by the countless spiders of her ego, she struggled against her fetid past. Silently the spider trapped her, pinning her to the web of thoughts.

And a white blur consumed all the black of her blindness.

_Vanity_.

* * *

**GAME OVER**

* * *

'I understand the boy's position sir-'

'Just get him. We need him.'

Heels clicked together, nodded briefly to each other, had a conversation, and then parted ways, both dreaming of the day they met their soulmate. Katsuragi turned to leave the room, leaving a trail of sound and disturbed air behind her. The sound bounced around for a bit, slightly bored with its abrupt start to life, before it dispersed out of existence with a whimper.

Gendo stared around his office as she left, ears perked. The space was not entirely unpleasant, rather, it was quite a nice room, and it suited his needs. He enjoyed its aesthetics, ones that other designers were still several centuries off discovering. Often he would go on about the windows to his subordinates, bragging about their light refracting qualities, he would do this until the others left, or his voice went hoarse. Satisfied the room was nice, the reluctant commander figured it was also not the reason for his staring and intense listening -listening that made the air quiet to avoid being heard.

Overlying the clacking of heels on marble there was a much lower, less tactile sound. The sound of rumbling as hundreds of missiles hit their target. As none did damage, and as their brothers were loaded up, preparing to commit suicide against sheathes of blackened skin.

A fearful thought creapt into his head, the small blob of anxiety was intensely confused with the unfamiliar surroundings, and wondered nervously how it had ended up there. But it quickly found company in misery, later they would go on to build a house and have two children, Depression and Insanity. Unfortunately due to Misery's love of company, it would cheat several times with Anger, leaving Fear on its own in the damp interior of Gendo's brain. It would then take its own life in a tragic end.

Gendo sighed.

'Sir, if I may hazard a guess-'

Gendo waved a hand in the direction of the voice, the voice nodded, affirming acknowledgent of the gesture, before continuing.

'Sir, the boy is much too weak to take on an Angel by himself.'

Gendo slouched even lower, head almost disappearing under his hands. He sighed. 'That's the point.'

'Oh.'

* * *

Fate.

Shinji knew fate like he knew calculus.

_He didn't_.

Fate. He knew, was unknowable. As soon as you figure it out, it decides to change shape. Nail it down and before you know it it's stolen the hammer and crucified you. Fate was depressing.

Depressed was a grimly accurate description of his position.

He was trapped between a rock and a hard place, in the form of a sheet of steel far too large for any purpose beyond being the hull of a ship and a surprisingly intact -but not perfect- concrete barrier. He had stopped feeling pain a while ago, so now he was biding his time until the last drop of his blood was lost.

And then?

And then, he thinks, and then I die.

Awfully simple.

With a sound much like a goat choking on an apple, Shinji Ikari ends his adventure. Rather his adventure is ended for him by a stray missile and a shower of oversize debris

* * *

Having red hair was good. (It was not in fact red, it was _ruddy_) It set her apart from the rest of her peers. Most with black, brown and other shades of boring. For a person of her position, having a specific colour of hair was not only important, it was _necessary_.

Said hair flicked over her shoulders ever so slowly as constant movements shook her head and shoulders. The strain of the exercises was something that made so she was sure no other person she knew had been able to complete the exercises at her age

'What are you doing!' Yelled her trainer, 'Put in some effort!'

Her shoulders trembling even further and quicker, she began to push harder, to the point that she could hear clicking as various joints strained under the pressure. 'C'mon! Wake up Asuka!' Yelled the trainer, walking over to the side of the machine, clapping his hands expectantly. Across his brow hung a mop of brown hair, shielding the most part of his face from her sight. 'Wake up!'

Wake up!

Wake up…

'Asuka! Wake up!'

Snap back to reality. Oh, there goes gravity.

Asuka fell from her seat, hard. Her head cracked against the side of someone else's desk before she spilled across the floor. This, of course, was a moment of hilarity, and so the class erupted into laughter, a chilling sound something like a swarm of bats screeching to each other.

'Oh…' She groaned, clasping the cut on the side of her head. 'Shit, that hurt.'

The floor wasn't exactly pleased either, it had been trodden on for the past fourteen years, had benches and desks scrape across it without remorse, now it had to deal with being coated in blood. There's no thanks for things like me, it thinks, we just do our job and get nothing for it.

The teacher was in a panic, in a space of a few seconds the classroom had gone from a rigid oligarchy run by the teaching staff to a complete anarchy. 'Calm down!' She yelled, ursurping authority, 'Everybody. Calm down, focus!'

Asuka groaned again, staring at the mass of blood matted hair that had found itself in her hand. She tugged again at her hair, and more came out. Thick, red clumps of blood sodden hair rained down around her, the horror was insurmountable.

'Focus!'

'Huh-'

The hair was gone, replaced by bubbles, the blood was yellow.

And there was a lot more of it. It surrounded her completely, filling her lungs and soddening her skin.

'Asuka! Focus!'

'Wha-? Oh…'

It had been a very confusing few minutes, slipping from one dream to another within the simple embrace of a liquid life. Her head hurt, her breath was short, she was uncomfortable and disconcerted, a possible explanation for her actions following the abrupt awakening. 'Shuttup!' She shouted, clasping her head in both hands. 'Just shut the-'

'Temper, dear.' Came the voice, calm and collected through the speakers. 'Remember where you are, you spiked a little back there.'

'I'm sorry…' She sighed, rubbing her forehead, 'Can we stop now?'

Indeed, had the past Asuka seen herself give up, she would've screamed and punched herself out so hard that she would've gone back into consciousness four times and out five times before she hit whatever floor she happened to be standing on.

Metaphorically. Of course the idea of punching one's self out was nearly unapplicable, considering it would disturb various make up items (in the feminine case) and is quite simply a rather daft thing to do.

'Sure.'

* * *

Sexual confusion is, at the very least, almost certain to occur in any sole individual, it is a normal act that the brain puts the body through to ensure and affirm its suspisions about sexual orientation. Ultimately this can cause a whole deal of grief and classical teenage angst.

Pointing in other directions, comes the idea of sexual confidence. An ability to like your body and use it to hold an equal position in any relationship. Most people do not in fact have this until much later in their lives.

Asuka knew all this, and the various psychologies surrounding it, so it came as a surprise as she began to peer down the front of her chest and wonder when she would fill out. Soon? She asked herself, sooner than later, hopefully.

Then she realized what she had said -rather, what she had thought- and decided to take a step in the exact opposite direction to her current train of thought, this of course derailed both engines and most of the carriages, caused a rather large mess inside her mental construct and injured several people, among them many innocent bystanders, watching the tracks for their train.

This phenomenon is best described as an acute sense of intense confusion normally occurring in the frontal cerebrum, where feelings are taken care of. The immediate result is a spattering of random thoughts that always -if not often- lead to self destruction (for lack of a better term) and a critical failure of the system.

And so Asuka cried. For no particular reason, of course. Just because that was the generally accepted action for this scenario (brains and minds aren't terribly creative.).

'Gendo, dear, would you go see what Asuka's crying about?'

A pair of eyes peered tiredly over the top of a crumpled newspaper, open at the business section. Previously these eyes had been pouring over the section, sucking in any data they could before spitting it out into the cesspool of knowledge. '…' Was all he said, the eyes did the talking.

The suburban apartment was bright at that time of the morning, the light being let through by several shallow and frosted windows. While the apartment was indeed rather large, the only real hint as to the amount of money the owners possessed was in a large, flat paneled display, made up of several HD LED displays hung together on a wall, a project of the husband towards which the wife had been incredibly adverse. All in all it was nice, simplistic, and homely.

'Do it or no sex for a week,' Came the reply.

'Fine, fine,' He grumbled, folding the paper primly and placing it down on the table. Needless to say, he was married, and as any man knows, marriage is a beautiful thing.

*Chuckles*

_Right~_

* * *

Shinji woke up.

As much as you can sleep while standing up and listening to dial tone. He was indeed standing on the footpath, holding a cheap plastic phone in his right hand. It shuddered slightly as a booming sound filled the air, getting closer with each shockwave. At first he wondered how he had gotten to his position from bed, but then as his memory rushed in to fill the gap, he realized he had previously died.

'Huh.' He grunted, staring at his hand in a mock disbelief. 'I don't feel d-'

That's when the apartment block directly opposite him fell over and crushed him flat.

* * *

Sachiel wasn't a bad thing -as much as a crocodile can be bad for devouring a person- but it did not feel any emotion -aside from a small feeling of puzzlement- as it watched the concrete pile in front of it shift and settle.

_I didn't even touch it._

* * *

As the rocks of a former building fell towards the ground, time seemed to slow for the fourteen year old. He didn't try to dodge it, so it came as a slight surprise as he found himself inside a car, somewhere far away from the scene.

'Huh.' He grunted, once more for good measure. Then checked his watch. Then checked his hand. Then he sighed. He'd lost an hour.

'Sumthin' the matter?'

'Not really.' He sighed, the world around him flickered from a dull blue to a vivid red. 'Wait.'

'Yup?'

'Where am I?'

'You're-'

'Why am I here -and who are you! Oh wait-' He stopped and checked his pockets, patting himself down in search of the elusive piece of material, 'one second.'

From her viewpoint, her charge had erased the past five minutes from his brain, and was now vigorously rubbing his legs with a determined expression on his face. An odd experience, to say the least.

'I-'

'And here it is!' Yelled Shinji, proud of his efforts. He held a small sheet of paper to his eye, comparing it with the woman in front of him. Satisfied, he relaxed, releasing the tension from his bones with an appreciative sigh. 'Ms. Katsuragi.' He said to himself, as if the name itself held the key to the universe.

'Colonel.' She corrected.

* * *

'Sir,' gulped one of the unimportant bridge technicians (bunnies, bitches, bananas, blah blah blah, et cetera, et cetera) as Gendo put it, the one on the left with the annoying hair and the air guitar, Ayoba? Was it?

He waved a hand vaguely in the nameless technician's direction, before seating his glasses back into their usual protective spots.

'We have a uh- we have a breach…' He trailed off.

'Where?'

It was the only word he said for a day and a half.

* * *

'Hey Ms Katsuragi what's tha-?'

* * *

Her pseudo-father figure was Gendo, he was good to her. made sure she wouldn't have the reason for any "daddy problems" later in her life -possibly for his own benefit- clothed her, took her in, all the rest. Of course being a male he wasn't exactly aware of female comings and goings and thus when he had stumbled in (after tripping over a doll, [it was of course staring blankly up at him with two black, cold and dead eyes in the way only dolls can]), he simply asked 'What's up? With the whole crying thing,'

'Some kind of train crash.' She had mumbled, 'it's nothing.' shortly before Gendo sighed, patted her on the head with a soft word about being a good kid, and left the room.

* * *

Shinji hurt, Shinji was not in a good mood, so Shinji said something. 'Jesus Christ what the fuck! Come the fuck on!'

'Don't get distracted, you're about to be launched.'

'Launched? Who said anything about la-'

There was a small static crunch as comm. channels were cut.

'Preparing for launch,'

Had Shinji known where he was, maybe he wouldn't have chosen that moment to spew forth a lung full of the orange liquid that seemed to breath life into him, maybe he wouldn't have checked his watch. Because all of a sudden, he had a bruise in the shape of a… watch on his forehead, and was covered in a mixture of bile and god knows what else. Also, all of a sudden he wasn't where he thought he was (had there been any time for thinking) he was moving, he was moving very fast.

Indeed so fast as to have him knock his head on stopping and knock himself out

Now he was a sitting duck.

'Oops.'

You could almost hear the facepalms.

* * *

To say that Sachiel -everyone's favorite Angel- was confused would be a slight understatement (At least in his world of being and relativity, where when he is the smallest bit confused, several hundred people could be twice as confused as a donkey falling from a plane with a shark in its parachute and a volcano coming up very quickly from beneath.). Sachi was very confused, he had been just about to knock over a particularly juicy looking building moments before, now he was staring down a suburban street, watching a purple and green thing _with a horn _waver and waddle about.

Sachiel had a spectrum of two emotions, happy and angry, as all Angels have (With certain exceptions.); when he was anything apart from happy he considered himself angry, and he was confused, so he was angry, that's how he rolled.

* * *

**Interlude**

* * *

Dickbutt

* * *

**End interlude**

* * *

And so we return to our faithful hero Sachiel, standing bravely up to the demons of his past, watching with nobility and passion for his cause as the beast breathes fire and causes great earthquakes with each thundering footstep. There is an incredibly appropriate clash of forked lightning and the purple demon roars with the force of a thundering typhoon. Sachiel stands tall in his suit of shining and spectacularly black armor, he hoists his sword -a bright and shining lance in the night- and utters what may be a death cry, then charges into battle.

In reality it was much less exciting, with the unconscious form of Shinji dreaming away the day, unfortunately those dreams found a way through the circuits to send the Eva into a part-waddle part-stumble around the city block, with an incredibly lanky and slow black thing -admittedly a cool shade of Eldritch- watching on.

It was painful to watch, as the purple thing stepped onto yet another car and destroyed yet another home.

Sachiel was angry, as explained before, and so he stalked over, rather quickly for his speed, and shoved two arm spikes and a third undisclosed spike into the beast. That seemed to slow it down, as it stopped moving and started bleeding thick and strong sprays of projectile blood which covered Sachiel in an appropriately gory manner.

* * *

Down below the kill was seen to be much less clean, with several moments of static obscuring it from view, until it flickered back onto an image of a blood covered Sachi holding a limp E-1 with it's pronged hands.

The scientist formally known as Dr. Akagi stared in shock (and silence); without the Eva there were three very painful options: Self destruct the facility; allow the Angel into Dogma and let third impact take its course; or self destruct the Eva with Shinji still inside, incinerating the Angel and Tokyo-3 completely. None of which were desirable, or chosen, thus she simply stared.

'Abu- what?'

There was a complete silence.

'You suck!'

Maybe not complete.

* * *

Had there been a Djinn present, Shinji could've simply wished away the day, and prayed to whatever god that it would end well.

Unfortunately this was not the case.

So he set his mind to other tasks.

Describing the feeling of not being able to feel was a hard task -by principle it was simply obsurd- but by god did Shinji try. He was feeling nothing as hard as he could in an attempt to come to terms with his surroundings, reaching out to nothing with a numb hand, deaf ears and blind eyes.

Then a feeling. Like an octopus to its prey he latched onto it, by whatever quirk of fate this feeling was pain, and just so happened to be the same amount of pain being experienced by an octopus at a nearby secret marine facility (It was being experimented on.).

Like a newborn he emerged from the abyss, but unlike a newborn, he knew that something was wrong, he wanted to stretch, to breath. But he couldn't. He could only stare upwards at the steel capsule surrounding him. He was pinned between a black claw and a crumpled steel seat. Both dug into him with rough cuts and bruises running off of the contact points.

It took him only a short while to notice that the claw had dislodged a small red lever and -being the escapist he was- he took a moment to read it before grabbing it.

'This sucks.' He sighed, and pulled

* * *

Figuring out how to describe an explosion the size of a city (without visual cues) takes a lot of imagination and is a difficult decision to make; one could do it from the viewpoint of the small girl about to be incinerated, a death much worse than fate had intended. You could do it from the perspective of the explosion, or you could do it from an emotional POV as the world is destroyed around whichever character you choose (In slow motion, of course.). These are all very fine descriptions and techniques used by many writers around the world. Unfortunately we're trying to be original here, so with a fleeting wave I believe one word sums it up.

Boom.

Wait.

**BOOM**

* * *

School passed by pretty quickly that day, there was no reason to suspect possible surprises put instore for her that day, nor had the deities above planned on any.

But surprises are -by rule- surprising. Surprises become much like fate by following this rule in the way of being impossible to truly pin down, and impossible for people to fully harness them (I say people by exception of animals; A rarely known insect living in the southwest sector of the Amazon rainforest is fully able to harness its own fate, unfortunately it only lives for a few hours after metamorphosis. Most dogs and dolphins also have this ability. Don't believe me? Just ask any dog or dolphin when next you see one.).

And so there was a surprise awaiting her.

Unfortunately it was anything but pleasant, rather it was quite unpleasant.

And it came in the form of an Olympic pool sized monster.

Well crap, she thought.

**End**


	2. Chapter 2

**Writing Without Warning (WWW)**: Awesome, thanks! I did like the mindfuckery comment, this story should have a smaller bit from now on, oh, and you know what this story really needs?

Some lemon!

No I'm joking.

**Griff**

**PS: Beta readers, I need one! Please PM.**

* * *

Her eyes turned a shade of empty, in front of her the world flickered, her brain trying to fix itself for the memories pouring through it. She was broken, the world was broken, reality was breaking apart before her very eyes and all she could do was watch the glass wall shatter to nothing around her. For the seconds following she was helpless.

This was when the Angel attacked. The Eldritch came down on her like a tone of black and glistening bricks, pinning her to the ground before drawing back with each arm and…

_Tearing? Not tearing…_

Pounding on her body, pounding and piercing her physical entity with as much effort as a fat man stealing candy from a premature baby. It was painful, horrible, the destruction this thing was wreaking on her was almost as much as the MPs-

_Where did that thought come from?_

She tried to dismiss it, but like a fly to a candle it returned, stirring about her mind and destroying the delicate balance of sanity, her sanity…

Her sanity was gone.

'Scratch test subject four-three-five,' sighed the on hand manager. For all his life he had been doing nothing but this one job, and now it was coming to a head, his head. His mind was full of nothing but the job, just pushing buttons and trying not to kill too many of the subjects.

_Too many._ He thought, a chiding one, _they all died._

And then came the probing again, boring through his mind and the delicate sets of firewalls and guards he had built up, all to plant one assuring thought.

_It will succeed_.

He had seen enough of the outside to know. He knew what success meant.

He liked it.

Against his will, it was not a probe, or any thought planting, it was a bare human instinct that pushed against his humanity to give him the sick pleasure in seeing dismembered body parts fall from a decaying body as the dead subjects were "mopped up".

_For success… _He thought, pushing aside the probe, _must we kill so many…_

_Simply to kill them all?_

* * *

**GAME OVER-2**

**A New Protagonist?**

* * *

In the centre of Tokyo-3 raged a battle of wills, on one hand, a massive red mech, pierced and ripped apart by the other's claws. The other contestant a black, dome topped Angel, with two very hot knives thrust forth into his body. Both were covered from tip to tail in the other's blood, the blue and red forming a sickening iridescent purple that poured over the street, wiping out cars and houses.

'Asuka! Pull out!'

From the other end there was no reply, hell, the supervisors barely knew if the girl was alive, or if the Eva had simply fallen onto the Angel with outstretched and armed prog. knives.

The amount of action happening, you would believe it was.

'Asuka! Do you copy! Pull out!'

Asuka did not copy, rather, she would've if her mouth wasn't full of her own blood. She was shaking, pushing onto her joysticks with her last inklings of strength. Pushed to the limits was a euphemism at this stage.

…pull out…

'Ma'am!' Came the shout, 'we've got instabilities occurring from within the plug!'

…plot…

She couldn't hear the pleas of the staff, all she could hear was her own heart, thundering in her ears.

_How could this… how could I…_

_Why did this happen…?_

'This can't be happening!'

…Plot… Came the staff again.

_A plot?_

From inside there was a faint clicking, a slight crunching, Asuka curled forward in her seat, unsure of the consequences.

From outside the occurance and sound was very clear to see and make out. Four red eyes glowed down upon the black monster; two knives had snapped and were discarded across the landscape.

Sachiel boggled for a while, before looking down at itself.

To say that the only time Angels feel any emotion apart from happy and angry is just before they die is not entirely untrue. Rather, as Sachiel looked down, he would have possibly felt puzzled -maybe he raised one dimpled eyebrow?- just before he popped over the landscape like a lead balloon.

Then came the Eva, which wasn't there.

It had been hit by a piece of Sachi's skin, and had been sent catapulting across the city, to land at rest inside a high rise apartment block.

To Yui, it looked as though it had disappeared with her adopted daughter. To Gendo -well- Gendo was asleep.

* * *

Confusion was about the smallest possible embodiment of the boy's feelings. First he had -at least he thought he had- died. And not in a dignified manner either, he had popped, just after seeing the news anchor, his mum, his dad, and his puppy pop in the same manner. Then he had been shat out onto a beach, momentarily before whiting out.

Now he was at school. It was exam time, and he hadn't studied.

Which was a little bit unfair. But just a little bit.

'Remember, for the next hour until you leave this room you are under exam conditions. If you are caught talking, turning around, or if your phone goes off and you are caught with it, you will get zero…'

_Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit._

'The papers will be coming around, only turn them over once the bell rings.'

_Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuuuuuck!_

Soon -too soon- his paper came before him, stapled neatly together with an air that said 'I'm a fucking hard exam'.

And whadya know?

The bell rang.

_Explain the events leading up to the Diaspora, and describe how these were repeated later in Zionist conflicts against Arab and western countries. [5]_

It was.

* * *

'Motherfucker!'

The small can whimpered slightly -metallically- as he kicked it into the side of an unfortunate car.

'Sumthin' wrong?' Asked his companion. Someone he hadn't actually known that long. But apparently he had known him for a long time, and seemed a good enough guy, so why not?

'That test,' he grumbled, ' 'Twas much bullshit,'

'C'mon now, it was easy. You just need to study a bit and you're sweet.'

'Easy for you to say,'

The sun twinkled slightly in the sky, glowing a soft red through a layer of grey clouds. Beyond the clouds glittered the blue sky , for a moment it looked close enough to reach out and touch…

'Dude, what're you doing?'

'Hm?'

It's easy enough to guess what he was doing.

* * *

'How's she?'

'She's stable. Calm down, that's the fourth time in the last hour you've asked me.'

'_You're _supposed to check every quarter of an hour. I shouldn't have to ask.'

Maya let out a sigh, before turning to face the subject that scolded. 'Just lay off. The worst thing that could happen-'

There was a whine, not a normal whine but the whine that belayed a litany of problems ready to royally screw the day up. This whine, it was said, was the death whistle, the sound that if sounded essentially meant the death of someone.

'Murphy's law.' Sighed Dr. Akagi, Ms. Akagi and Ritsuko had been left in her closet, along with a head of red hair and a list of hastily covered up problems -they would probably lead to her demise sooner or later- the doctor simply scanned over the readings before sighing, almost with a lack of the appropriate luster required for the situation. 'She's dead.'

'Well shit.'

* * *

'Just calm down.'

'No! I died, I felt myself die! You can't just say I didn't!'

'Why?' She asked, confused.

'Because I did! Now I'm here again and I don't know why!'

He was panicking, it was evident on his face, from the pulsing veins to the beet-red flush coming across his face, and then there was the shaking of the hands (Fittingly curled into fists.) and the seeming lack of care for his surroundings as he swung and knocked over yet another medical instrument.

'Look at it! It's just there!'

'Of cour-'

'Stop making fun of me -eck-'

Heart attacks happen at the worst times.

* * *

Heart attacks, however, are not always fatal.

'And he's coming around.'

'Thanks. That was… unexpected? Can I say that?'

'Say what you want, next time just don't interrupt me halfway through…' There was a moment of silence, accompanied by a rush of blood to the cheeks of the good doctor, a bastard of a trait.

'Halfway through…?' Suggested the purple haired lady across from her.

'Never mind.'

With that Doctor Akagi retired to her quarters, to continue her _activities_.

'I died just then didn't I?'

'No. You didn't.'

'Oh good, so what is this, when's the Angel coming?'

'…'

'What?'

'The- uh- The Angel's… dead! Yeah, it's dead. You, ah, killed it.' Misato averted her gaze.

'Good.'

There was a moment of silence, as the recently deceased Master Ikari ruffled the sheets around him, making himself comfortable amidst the violent hissing of medical machines. Slowly, delicately, Misato placed one hand on his knee, a reassuring gesture.

'Okay, by now.'

She left the room, leaving Shinij on his own, to watch the clock and listen to the mechanical clunks and groans of the artificial underground. As he turned to watch he noticed the artificial lights dim to red, in a simulation of sunset.

And the memories flowed back in.

Unimaginable agony ensued, his head pounded and pulsed until finally, the memories of his life settled into place, and the world shattered around him.

_YOU CANNOT REMEMBER_

With a final sigh, death enveloped Shinji.

_YOU CANNOT REMEMBER_

* * *

Five days had past since the first exam, and the intense and nerve pulverizing period known as Examination Week was over -the examination part was, at least, but the getting them back and checking them for mistakes part had a long way to go before being done. All the classes had returned to normal seating and timetables, including the boy's. His homeroom was something along the lines of S2, in the science block. He now stared around him, taking in the various sites and sounds of the people that were apparently his classmates.

The classroom was in the equivalent of chaos, on a school-level, there were people running around; people running around with scissors; people running around with scissors poised delicately below their eyeballs. Guys were blatantly –the opposite of latently- looking up girls (Skirts?), the girls were doing girl stuff (Giggling, talking, more giggling, more talking, touching each others' hair… et cetera).

And then the teacher walked in.

And the class continued as usual.

'All right!' Yelled the teacher.

The whole class snapped to attention. Scissors were dropped; people began to shut up. They moved desks back into regular positions and sat down.

The boy had never seen a more complete display of authority in his entire life.

'Class!' Yelled the teacher again, walking around the front, 'You did your exams!'

There was a murmur of affirmation.

'Good, because I only marked one of them!'

There was a murmur of disappointment, a few chuckles. A few remarks of the professor's laziness were passed around. But overall the class seemed happy.

'And here it is!'

It took a small while for the sheets to be handed out, a result of a small organizational problem amidst the first few people, it was fixed soon enough and soon enough the test papers were handed out.

All except the boy's.

'Now I have one here, without a name!' Yelled the teacher. 'Which muppet forgot to name theirs?'

The boy nervously put his hand up, expecting a scolding. What he got was a stack of paper to the face and his exam.

_His exam._

After checking briefly over his one page exam he began to notice the difference in length his held against the other ones. To his left was a three page long essay on the subject, to his right four pages.

He wrote two words.

_What is risk?_

"This is"

100%

'Now you boy,' Started the teacher, looking down at him, 'have a fresh mind.'

* * *

_Sachiel watched. The thing was clearly dead, but with a bang more than the splutter he had intended. But that wasn't important._

_What was important was his progress, unimpeded by the efforts of the thing. The prize was good as his. He cleared the thoughts from his mind and stalked over to the edge of the abyss he had dug, for a few seconds he did nothing but stare into the pit. Then with a crunching of the concrete below him, and the creaking of his bones, he jumped._

HR

'_Target has breached defensive layer 5. It's in the geofront!'_

'_Run a scan through the MAGI, take its most likely path and shut it off, I want you to throw everything you have at it.'_

_From above the panicked rabble of the main bridge, Gendo watched, silently and coldly looking over the proceedings. His right hand man stood to his left, and his glasses glinted in the dim light._

'_They aren't going to make it,' he breathed._

_Some predictions are worth not making._

* * *

_For as long as he could remember, Sachi had been waiting for this moment, his feet stepped clumsily across the jetty to face the birth of his goal, the crucified white body hung without legs, beckoning him to come near, to take one more step.._

_Into the LCL. At once there was a problem, something had happened._

What? Why?

_The burning, the pain._

What's happening!

_Sachiel howled, a guttural, helpless and hapless cry of a dying being with no alternative. The shriek itself shook foundations loose from buildings, and before long the entire world heard his death crie. Sachiel died a true death, engulfed in the fires of his personal hell._

* * *

'_I dunno, I guess we should tell him about it.'_

'_How do we explain the destruction of E-1, then have him see it when the next Angel comes around?'_

'_We-'_

'_We can't, if we want him to stay and pilot, we _can't _let him know where the new Eva came from. We can't even let him know how the Angel was destroyed. Are we clear?'_

'_A-'_

'_Are we clear?'_

'_Yes ma'am.'_

* * *

'So she's alive.'

'Yes…' Murmured Ritsuko, she coughed, before continuing. 'Unfortunately it left her with a significant amount of brain damage, likely she'll-'

'It doesn't matter.'

'Surely-'

'Nope, as long as she can get into the Eva, it can be her body and her mind,'

Yui's endless supply of optimism did at times cross over into purely disturbing comments about the qualities of a crippled girl and indeed anything, this was one of these times and it left the good doctor stunned into submission.

'Okay.' She said at last. 'She'll do.'

* * *

_Help me._

The white tiles flashed above her, lights and doorways flickered past as the ICU bed was wheeled down the corridor, on the way to the operating theatre.

_Help me._

The world was further away now than ever, she couldn't feel it, she couldn't reach out and touch it, she could only observe, even as they wheeled her into the operating theatre, even as the lights blinked on and blinded her. She couldn't do anything.

As the knife began to sink into her numbed flesh, she tried to speak, but the words did not come.

So she screamed.

She screamed with neither mouth nor sound. But there was an answer.

_YOU ARE USELESS_

* * *

The skull was twisted, a monstrosity born of the unholiest powers. Below it hung the body, a blackened and twisted mess, the bones from its horrific past still hung attached, twisted and gnarled into the shape of a human. From the arms hung steel plates, hurriedly being fastened on by workers. On its chest was a red orb, surrounded by the same steel plates that covered the better half of both arms.

There was a clunking as a mechanized crane lowered the final piece over the core.

Several hours later the face would be completely covered, and the memory of its past life would be forgotten completely.

Eva was an abomination.

Eva was a demon.

**END**


	3. Chapter 3

**Date: 23-9-15 **

**Subject: **_Asuka L_ S_ [Name omitted]_

**Operation: **_Experimetal [Name undisclosed/classified]_

**Effects: **_Removal of left eye- Addition of augmentation to spinal column- Modification of face and jaw- Cerebral connections rerouted- _

**Outcome: **_Moderate success- Self harming possibilities minimized- Neural connections created/reopened- Patient may be subject to intense feelings of self loathing and/or depression (Recommend anti-depressants per vita)-_

**Post scripts: **_Thought an unusual chance to operate on someone so young, it was welcomed by the team. The operation I'm sure you are aware went well, despite not administering general anasthetics or painkillers. Regards to Dr. Ikari for the use of the patient._

**-E. Juhasz (Head surgeon)**

* * *

**GAME OVER**

* * *

'Commiting links 115 through 140 to motor neurons. Hookup in five.'

_They took my eye._

'Now configuring augmentations to d-type equipment.'

Asuka could just make out the sound of metallic prongs making their way into her back through the din of the comm. chatter. The sound was little more than a faint whine as rod after rod passed through her back to hook onto her spine. She could hear it, the manner of their actions was comparable to leeches. But she couldn't feel it. She couldn't feel it much like a blind man can't see the instruments in a torture chamber.

'Configuration complete.'

The green orb in her face began to glow, lighting up the steel implants that were embedded into her cheekbones.

_They took my life_.

'Commencing final hookup.'

_Why me?_

She felt as if god himself was punishing her for an other wordly crime against humanity.

_Why me?_

'Three…'

As if the world itself had decided to stop pulling up and had started pushing down.

'…two…'

Hookup was the most dangerous part, Asuka knew it, she intended to use it. Like a needle injecting adrenaline it could also inject air. Killing her by a process of doing nothing.

'…One.'

The lights dimmed. The green of her new "eye" went red and the displays shut off.

* * *

'What happened?' Sighed Yui, slipping the handle of her coffee mug around her fingers. 'What went wrong? C'mon, speak up.'

There was a moment of genuine silence, penetrated only by the faint hum of the air conditioning.

'Um, ma'am?'

'Yup?' She yawned. Like most tired people she had bags under her eyes and a shortening attention span.

'During the final hookup the neural connections appeared to have switched from the Eva into the main power grid, this overloaded the circuits and crashed the system.'

'Damn girl.' She muttered. Wryly glancing over at Dr. Akagi.

'Well you can't blame her for trying,' came the response. 'If that was my life I-'

'That isn't her life!' Shouted Yui, the many restless nights finally getting through. 'Eva is her life now! That's all she can do, so she better learn to live with it.'

The room watched in silence. An outburst like that would normally have been amusing, but in the context it cast a damning light on Dr. Ikari.

'What?' Yui turned, 'I'm not paying you to sit around, get it powered back up and get her synced! The next Angel ain't gonna wait for you.'

* * *

Asuka stared silently from within the tube, she had failed.

_I can't even die._

* * *

**GAME OVER-3**

**Empty (The God Complex)**

* * *

An action is a motion described of as a verb. Why? Because people say so. If people didn't say so, then we would do things without knowing the name of what we do.

And that's the way of the world.

And by actions, the world continues.

And from actions to acts the act must continue with an action.

* * *

'Neural processes nominal. Absolute borderline achievable whenever you want ma-'

'Yeah. Shut up, I know.'

'Well geez-'

'I said be quiet!' Hissed the slightly annoyed Dr. Akagi. 'This mic's not cooperating very much… Maya.'

The young woman -not quite a girl, not quite a lady- snapped to an almost immiediate attention -Ignoring (or trying to) the massive spider perched upon her lap.

'Get the number two mic. Some joker's switched it with the number five.'

'Right away ma'am,'

A few minutes and repairs later all appeared well. Someone had indeed swapped the number five microphone with the number two.

Everybody knows you can't do that.

You just can't.

'Shinji,' Akagi tapped the mic, 'Can you hear?'

'Yeah. One question tho'.'

'What is it.' She sighed, tapping her watch face.

'Why are we testing-'

'All right people, back to your seats. Commence the final hookup.'

'Yes ma'am.'

* * *

Shinji boggled.

_She cut me off._

Around him the plug began to churn, motor neurons met their match within the behemoth and borderline was cleared

_Dick._

There was a faint humming.

Then something weird happened.

He burst, not with a genuine "pop" but more with a slight fizz as his body was transmuted into primordial sludge and sucked into the LCL filter. This was probably the only wash he had had in days.

And admittedly he needed… something, a bath, a shower, anything.

* * *

'Dude.'

The cup was empty, no toothbrush, nothing.

'Dude!'

Many a morning did start like that for the boy, searching through his house, tearing apart furniture, ripping open drawers, in pursuit of his toothbrush.

Which some invasive albino cat always hid.

'Fekkin' cat.' He grunted, yanking the destroyed mass of plastic and fibre out from under a sofa cushion. 'Oh geez…'

It was completely destroyed, like someone had chucked it in a blender then forgotten about it only for the remains to be discovered by a hungry hippo, who then ate it, crapped it out, and left it in his couch.

It was actually only one cat, the same cat, in fact, that was now staring him down from across the room. Behind it (him? Her? The amount of nudered cats around these days, it's hard to know) there was a wall, on that wall there were scratches, covering the entire top half, but only beginning to leach into the bottom half.

Which is odd, as cats aren't generally that tall.

However the boy wasn't thinking on any of this -on that matter neither was the cat- he was too busy putting boot to arse and kicking the cat out of the house.

In a literal, not figurative sense.

'And stay out!' He yelled, once the feline creature was several feet away, too far to launch a surprise attack. The cat hissed in response and shot off into the bushes.

* * *

All of a sudden Shinji found himself inside a room. A white room. With neither windows nor a door, it was a simple cube, colored white. Whoever designed it had had a very boring mind. Gendo's designers would've been ashamed of their craft, such was the boringness of the room.

'Hello?' He called, peering into the corners of the box like they contained the secret to the universe. 'Anyone there?'

The only reply was his own echo, a stark reminder of his situation.

'Hello?'

_HELLO_

The walls of the room began to turn red, only slightly at first, no more than a faint tinge at the bottom of the structure. They continued to dim into the blood tinge as Shinji watched, watched them slowly turning the colour of his dreams.

_HELLO, FRIEND_

The world imploded.

* * *

…

…

Shinji dared to think.

He dared to move, he dared to speak. Now he heard everything; the screams. Long, hollow moans one would expect from a tortured animal.; The voices. Chattering softly around his entity, with a poise like a tiger about to strike.

'…'

The demons whispering sweet and false promises into his ear.

_We can end it all…_

He shivered slightly, mumbling under his breath various undesernable obscenities and stunted gibberish.

'…'

There was a scream. The same as before.

'…help…'

Shinji continued to mumble under his breath.

'…please…'

Still no response from the catatonic boy.

'Somebody please!'

One eyelid flicked open.

'Help me!'

Then the other.

'Hel-'

The sound was cut from the air, choked silent. Then Shinji was running, running to the source of the noise, running across the blackened plain of his infinity. He knew not why he ran towards -as opposed to away from- the hollow howls and screeches of pain. It was just a feeling.

The sound came again.

To his left? No… to his right. Then to his left again, it alternated points like a social adept alternating personas. To his left even more and then…

A door.

A door in the middle of his world.

In the middle of an endless plane, there was a single door.

'What the-'

He reached out and touched it, putting his weight on the door ever so slightly.

And fell through.

* * *

'I'm sorry, but the Eva is the only place she can live now… Yes well- what? You can go tell HR to jump in a lake. Yes yes, I'll tell her… yes I know… yea-… oh fudge it.'

She hung up.

'These damn beaurocrats…' She sighed, rubbing her knuckles against her forehead.

Yui was sitting alone in her office, watching the cheap plastic clock on the wall tick her life away. A small display sat across from her, displaying Asuka. Who may have been asleep -It was impossible to tell from the camera feed. Following her possible example, Yui would have fallen asleep herself, if not for the glaring green orb shining down across the room. Instead she worked on paperwork, filing out new documents for the use of a "new organic component to the Evangelion".

'Load of bull.' She muttered under her breath, staring back up at the screen she sighed. 'I'm sorry Asuka, I really am.'

* * *

Asuka stared at the display, set up to her left. She wasn't used to being in the Eva for that length of time, and so she felt sick, disorientated, wondering when she would get out again.

'I'm sorry Asuka.'

_Hm?_

'I really am.'

The seconds passed, as Yui appeared to fall asleep on screen.

'So… sorry.'

Apparently she was not asleep.

'But you can only survive in there now.'

_N-_

'I'm sorry.'

Yui got up onscreen, and walked off, leaving an empty room and a lonely Asuka behind.

_No…_

_'I can only survive in here now.'_

_NO_

_HR_

_'Isn't it a little cramped in there? They should let them into one of the larger tanks.'_

_The conversation was faint, a slight buzzing behind the constant blipping of her cell._

_'They can't.'_

_Talking of soft conversations, the voice was almost unhearable._

_'Huh?'_

_'They can only survive in there now.'_

_Asuka looked up through the piping, staring up at "the idiot" and "the teacher's pet"._

Is that really me?

_Asuka turned back down to her cellphone._

_Another text again. Fancy that._

I can only survive in here now…

_YOU CANNOT REMEMBER_

The world went white once more.

* * *

**INTERLUDE**

* * *

Prof. stood, staring.

Was the ice cream?

_No._

_It can't be._

'It's melted!'

Boxes on boxes of hokey pokey, vanilla, jelly tip, raspberry and white chocolate, peanut butter choc-chip and crunchie flavored ice cream. All gone because of the-

'Freezer!' Shouted the teacher, pointing a convicting finger in the direction of the block of white porcelain. 'What is the meaning of this?'

There was no reply, yet the freezer continued to stare coldly, boring into the teacher's soul like a drill going into butter.

'Answer me! Fiend!'

Still no answer, just the soft humming of the motor and the creaking of loose floorboards under the teacher's weight.

'No…' Whispered the teacher.

Two miles away a flock of birds scattered, fleeing the presence of the sound. A low and guttural cry with the qualities of a foghorn on steroids. In space, the ISS shifted in its orbit. The planets aligned and the stars shuddered slightly. Down on Earth hurricanes stopped in their path, cockroachs dropped dead and fourteen million domestic animals suffered heart attacks simultaneously -the cause of which is unknown to this day.

'Now I can't have ice cream for breakfast!'

* * *

For a winter's day it was unusually sunny, the clouds were all gone and the sky was perfectly clear, shining a brilliant blue over the fields of the school. In the distance the white bricked main hall sent rays of light careering slowly into the eyes of the four students and one teacher assembled there. Nicely topped off with a smattering of green and red photons from the roofing and tower domes.

'Now students.' The teacher did start, walking across the ranks with his walking stick prodding the perfectly tended fields. 'We have gathered for a very important reason, can anyone tell me what that is?'

An elephant and four giraffes died in the time it took for a student to answer, not to mention the billions of bacteria and the four species of insects that disappeared misteriously.

'Is it because the boarding house's freezer broke, sir?'

The cane flicked up, bringing with it blades of grass and clumps of dirt, also a rare form of cell known for its rapid expansion when in contact with the sun (Not the sunlight, the actual sun. Don't ask me how they know, because I don't know.) Through this the student suddenly had an unimaginable urge to scratch, as he found the cane pointing in his direction.

'Exactly!'

'So why are we here sir?'

'Because.' The teacher grinned, not entirely evil but with enough fiendishness that the blackbirds nearby stopped singing. 'We are going to by a new freezer.'

'Oh geez…' Sighed the boy, attempting to cover up his incredibly bad case of morning breath.

_As long as it doesn't turn out like the referee story…_

* * *

**TIME: **0856 HOURS

**OPERATION ICD: **START

* * *

'Smith, Grant, cover the back entrance. The new kid and I are going in. Mace, you keep our exit way clear.'

'Right away sir.' The joint reply was fuzzy and stilted over the airwaves, a direct result of the frequency jammers the teacher had set up so their conversation couldn't be monitored.

From his hiding place behind the dumpster, the boy watched as the other three students moved to their positions, this left just him and the teacher. He gulped nervously, and the skin on his neck thanked him for the exercise.

'You ready?' He chuckled, letting the sweat wash over his dry skin.

'Yes.' Nodded the teacher, solemnly putting on his best poker face. 'Just like we practiced.'

They took a last glance around the parking lot, before walking into the store.

_Like normal people._

_Oh yeah._

* * *

'Excuse me.'

The employee continued to stare straight ahead, trying his hardest to avoid being the subject of their speech, and failing miserably

'Excuse me.'

Still the employee kept his back turned, the beads of sweat rolling down his face took joy in their brief existence and unfortunate redundancy.

'I said: Excuse me.'

Finally, the shop keeper gave up the ruse and turned.

'Oh give me a break.'

Two males, one looking like a member from the junior secret service, complete with suit and ear piece, the other a slightly crazy looking man around 30, wearing a suit and looking straight ahead.

'Good.' Started the junior one, stepping up to the store employee with a precision not unlike a factory machine. 'My te-'

'Ahem.'

The teacher shot him a look.

The look said shut the fuck up.

'Sorry,' Whispered the boy back, 'My _client _wishes to purchase a freezer.'

'Well, er, would your client like to see our range?'

'Show us your best one,' The boy leant forward. Carefully making it as obvious as he could without overdoing it, 'Pranav.' He rolled the name over his tongue, carefully making sure he made it as apparent as possible that he didn't give a crap.

'Well if you and your client come with me I can show you out top range models.'

'That would be adequate.' Replied the boy.

* * *

Exactly four minutes and fifty seven seconds later they were -all five of them- sitting on the curb in front of the store. All looking fairly dejected.

'What went wrong, d'ya reckon?' Asked Ben, the teacher.

'Probably when you asked me to ask to see Noel, and then Noel came out, and we don't know Noel.'

'And then you asked to see the other Noel.'

'Yup.'

'That was probably it.'

'Mhmm…' Hummed the boy.

'Well, what's the next store?' Asked a tired looking Grant.

'Nothing.'

That was Mace.

'Yeah, sorry guys, it's five, I gotta go.'

'Five?' The suited one checked his watch. 'Holy crap.'

'You gotta go? I'm sure your mother's worrying.'

'…'

Ben stared at him, observing the way he stood still, hand on chin.

'That's odd…' He breathed. 'Yeah, I'll be going.'

'Dude.' Whispered Ben, his eyes glinting. The man was a child at heart. 'He had a tattoo!'

'No…'

'Well then, let's do this again tomorrow.'

'Okay, see you later.'

'Bye.'

* * *

'Hey Ben,' The boy whispered, peering nervously around the dumpster, their second target was nearbye; an appliance shop hidden in a strip-mall, which itself was hidden in the kind if suburb each student had told themselves they were never going to visit. 'Why's it called operation ICD?'

'I mispelt ice, as in freezer.' He replied.

'Cool.'

Okay, this time we don't mention Noel.' Whispered Ben.

The boy nodded.

'Ri-'

'It's Joel, I know it.'

'Um-'

'Okay, I'm pumped.' Ben whispered, excitedly flexing his shoulders back and forth. 'Let's do this. Mace, Grant, Smith, positions.'

They set off without waiting for a reply, one that came halfway across the street.

'Affirmative.'

* * *

'Not again!'

'Motherfucker.'

'I told you Joel wasn't going to work,'

'No you didn't, and look,' Ben pointed across the strip mall, 'There's another store.'

'Yeah there is, but it's late, Grant and Mace already left.'

'Well third time lucky,' Sighed Ben, undefeatable. 'C'mon, let's go.'

The boy got up. 'Smith? You coming?'

'Nah,' replied the other student, 'I gotta go make dinner.'

'Okay, that leaves me and-' He looked around, Ben was gone. 'Oh dammit.'

* * *

The interior of the other store was strange, not what you would expect an appliance store to look like, even in this area of the suburbs.

And Ben was in love.

She stood at roughly eight feet, had porcelain white skin and a square figure

She also came with a beer fridge and was on sale.

'I'll take it.' Yelled Ben, ruining the game.

'Good' Grumbled the shopskeeper. 'Damn thing keeps killing employees.'

'What?' Asked the student.

'Nothing.' Returned the shopkeeper.

'Ben,' he began. 'Are you sure this freezer's a good idea?'

'Yup.'

And that was that.'

'Sir,' Piped up one of the students. 'Are you sure that's the reason you haven't marked our exams?'

The class stopped to look, Ben had stopped halfway through a sentence on the whiteboard to form a reply. But found he couldn't, his attention instead fixed on something else.

'No.' He whispered. 'It can't be!'

'Remember me?' Came the low grumble. 'You left me for dead.'

'No. I mean- you were broken!'

From the shadows in the far corner of the room stepped a white cube, perfectly shaped for-

'A freezer…' Gasped Ben. 'No…'

'Yes.' Replied the cooling unit.

'Kids get out.'

'Sir-'

'Kids! Get out! This is my fight.'

Reluctantly the class filed out.

From outside they could hear the sounds of grunting and crashing as desks were thrown around the room.

'And that's why you shouldn't go to school drunk.' Sighed Mace

'Agreed.' Replied Grant, with a sly glance through the window, only to see Ben grappling with a whiteboard marker.

'Man that guy's a laugh.'

* * *

**END INTERLUDE**

* * *

The world was black.

The walls, the sky, the floor. All black.

Except.

_A fire._

A fire that grew, reaching and multiplying across the landscape like an iridescent infinfection, a red glow that flicked out light from the flames until it filled the space and the full view could be seen.

Asuka gasped.

There was a boy. Roughly her age with sooten hair and an ash covered face. He was wearing a tattered jacket and torn shirt, his pants were covered with dirt and dust. Branded across his arm were the numbers four-three-six, and behind him the world was burning

And he was singing (He was also playing piano).

It was a slow, sad song, with grace notes and minor notes layered on thick. Alongside it his voice fit perfectly; low, keening, but still strong.

'If I could find assurance, to leave you behind,'

It brought tears to her eyes.

'Then I know my better half would fade,'

Then she woke up.

'Asuka dear! Come get some breakfast!'

Asuka got up, briefly checked her face in the mirror, worrying with the intensity only a teenage girl can muster about acne, before putting on her uniform and walking from the room.

It was a perfectly normal day.

Until that evening.

* * *

_From within the flat came a cry, a baby's wail without a mother to silence it through lullabies and gentle rocking. Around the block swarmed men in black suits, forensics men, photographers, dusters, the whole lot was there._

_Inside was not a pretty picture. The apartment was cluttered with the mess of a single mother just after childbirth who was juggling a very important job with housekeeping and with her daughter (In hindsight juggling babies probably actually wasn't a good idea)._

_'Get a coroner down to block-D right away.' Ordered a younger Dr. Ikari, holding a red headed baby in her left arm, 'Dr Sohryu's had an accident.'_

_'What kind of accident?' Chuckled the man from the other end of the phone. 'Childbirth leave her with a "slight weakening of the pelvic muscles"?'_

_'No.' Replied Yui, a long time friend of the doctor's, 'She's dead. I assumed you would've guessed from the fact I asked for a coroner,'_

_There was only silence from the other end._

_'Oh, _shit.' _A period of more silence, 'Yes, I mean_ _right away Mrs. Ikari.'_

_It was a period of time before a very stout young man walked in, checking his watch absent-mindedly. He asked briefly for the body. To which he was directed behind a sheeted section of the room. He emerged several seconds later._

_'There's not much to say…' He told Yui. 'She slipped onto the bedpost, unfortunately there's not much saying this wasn't an accident.'_

_'Thank you sir,' Replied Yui._

_The coroner tipped his hat, uttered a condolence, and left, trading places with Yui's husband, the infamous Gendo Ikari, well known for his exploits in the women's locker room and the various bar fights he'd lost._

_'So… guess she's ours to look after now.' He sighed, taking the redheads baby from Yui's arms. She, in a rather cliched manner, stopped crying._

_'Yeah. I guess she is.'_

_'She's perfect.'_

_'For the project, yeah, she is.'_

_'And that.'_

_'Right.'_

_The scene slowed down for a second in typical awkward fashion, before Gendo uttered his farewells and left._

_Yui sighed, her phone ringing once more._

_'Yes? What?… oh… oh god. No, tell them I'm on my way.'_

* * *

Shinji stared up at the figure in front of him; it was barely recognizable as the fourth Angel, with massive black strips of flesh hanging off of his twisted and mangled body. The iconic skull was gnarled and dented, and his own spikes had been used to crucify him, leaving his arms twisted around and crushed into what could be considered his ribs. But still he lived.

'Help me.' He groaned, coughing out blue ichor.

Shinji stared in shock, his mouth wide and gaping.

'Kill me…'

* * *

_Through the haze of the hospital lighting, one could make out a hunched over figure, hands over its face, sitting in a chair. One could also make out two larger figures, standing slightly behind the sitter._

_'Pneumonia is common… among this generation.'_

_Silence._

_'I suspect you know already.'_

_More silence, broken by the hum of the reception's heater._

_'Your son contracted it, about four months ago? At about one year of age.'_

_Silence. The answer was already written on the doctor's clipboard._

_'Unfortunately tonight he took a turn for the worst, at about seven o'clock, his heart ceased to beat.'_

* * *

'Kill me.'

Shinji still just stared.

'I don't know how.' He breathed, looking at the shrunken down version of the fourth Angel.

'You see that?' The Angel coughed, nodding at a piece of discarded bone.

Shinji nodded back, picking up what looked like a spike that someone might put somewhere else than their arms.

'Put it in my core.'

There was a pounding at the door behind them, the faint hum of the voices had turned into a roar; it was close enough to feel the vibrations through the imaginary world.

'Do it.' Insisted Sachiel.

Shinji looked down, uncertainly rolling the spike over in his hand.

The banging came again.

That was all the encouragement he needed. With a grunt he thrust it into the Angel's core.

Sachiel stared at him, then placed one hand on his shoulder.

'My name is empty.'

Shinji reformed as Sachiel burst.

'We got him!' Cried Maya, standing up to lean further into her screen.

Everybody stared.

_Everybody_.

She sat back down. There was a moment of_ very_ awkward silence before Dr. Akagi flicked on the monitor. True to Maya's outburst he was there, unconscious, but still there.

'Good work everybody,' Sighed Ritsuko, donning her social face. 'Let him out and let's go home.'

'Right away ma'am.'

* * *

_Your son's progress is fine, especially in philosophy, but his work ethic needs some work. Several times this year he has not handed in assignments by their due date, and a few times not at all._

_B. (Homeroom teacher)_

_P.S. Tell him his fridge rangling skills need some work._

The boy turned his mid-year report over, though it meant that holidays were coming, it carried with it an air of judgement.

And it made him think.

_Everything was there. _

Unbeknownst to him, the cat slipped in through his open door. It darted out of sight before he could catch a glimpse of it; around the corner and up the stairs.

_Why didn't I think of it before._

There was a faint crash from upstairs as a vase full of carefully tended Amaryllises went toppling. The cat emerged downstairs holding his toothbrush, noted the door had closed in the wind, and ran into the kitchen.

_Where's my family?_

* * *

Asuka was about as pumped as a dead rat on HCl. Strictly speaking this Asuka was more of a girl who'd be studying when the world was falling so she didn't fail her finals. She preferred a book to a night out, and good music to a boyfriend, her tastes in which excluded everything made on a computer and played at raves.

She also didn't like fighting, unlike other girls she had seen hole punching their nails to use as weapons (You see, the hole punch would make two sharpened points on either side of the nail and yeah… you should get it).

Now she found she had no choice, even through all her preparation she hoped that the supposed Angels would be a simple superstition. A pseudo-fad among the paranoid and the intelligent.

Nope.

Apparently not.

'Now Asuka. Remember what you learnt.'

Asuka had learnt a lot that day, and the pressure had mounted to something spectacular, so it came as no surprise as she uttered a few simple words.

'Cosine is equal to the opposite side divided by the hypotenuse.'

'Actually wrong, Cosine is equal to the adjacent side over the hypotenuse. But that's irrelevant, what you need to do is-'

The Angel took a slow, painful step forward down the road separating the two behemoths.

Asuka snapped.

'What? Tell me! It's coming closer! What did I learn? Why is this happening…'

Ritsuko turned away from the mic as the spiel continued, looking at Yui with a strange expression on her face, one that was not only unreadable but made the entire scene unseeable.

She put her hands up, looking for help.

Yui shrugged back, she worked better under more pressure.

'Asuka-'

'~It's coming closer~!'

'As-'

'Help!'

Akagi turned once more, but found no help.

Defeated, she took the alternate route.

'Shut the hell up you ingrate!' She yelled.

That shut Asuka up.

'Now. Please listen.'

Asuka was hyperventilating, but still she put up a thumb.

'The red thing is the weakness.'

Asuka was perched on her seat, listening for more.

'Is that it?'

'You could try stabbing it. But other than that there'as not really that much I can tell you.'

'Are you serious?' She asked, rubbing the bridge of her nose.

'Yup,'

Asuka groaned, before half heartedly giving the command.

What? It's mental, she doesn't need to say anything.

Above her, way above her, a knife dropped out of the shoulder pylon.

'Let's go.'

She wasn't very enthusiastic.

**End**

* * *

**Author's note:** Okay, let me first say, I know that the ISS is going to be…

Nevermind.

**Griff**


	4. Chapter 4

**AUTHOR'S NOTE**

****Yeah... I've had exams, so the writing's taken a backseat, but they're about to end! Which means more writing and delicious mindfuckery!

So yeah, the chapter's a few weeks late and a few thousand words short. So now you know why.

**START**

It was unmistakable, the feeling of something rough and dry, akin to sandpaper, grinding along his face to dislodge him from sleep. Then came the paws; It was relentless, the constant battering of soft flesh against his face continued without end until he lashed out. The two stage attack had succeeded in forcing him from his slumber in a bed that honestly felt a lot like what god's slipper might've felt like.

The cat recoiled at first at the fist, but in the millisecond before it connected with the feline's face it decided it would take it.

It did, sending it flying across the room and into the nearest wall. It clung there like a has-been clutching at scraps of fame.

The boy rolled over, slamming his clock to show him the time.

4.35 AM

_Fuck this I'm out._

Sleep came quickly after the unwelcome awakening, much like a Killer descending upon a victim it dragged the boy into the abyss.

He was out cold by the time the cat crawled in with him.

* * *

**GAME OVER -4**

**A Dark Place**

* * *

The sun was bright that morning, not just the regular eye disintegrating brightness it normally had, but brighter; through some trick of date it had coupled with the remaining blood in the atmosphere to refract out across the entire landscape as a sun far brighter than the 30,000 year old light dictated (Fact: light takes approximately 30,000 years to travel from the core of the star into space.).

In the corner of the household, the 151" TV (A combination of several 40" TVs into one monster of a thing) blared away happily to itself.

And Asuka.

It blared away to Asuka as well.

'Revelations of last night's terrorist attack on the centre of Tokyo-3 continue as it is uncovered that a secret organization, Codename V, had a major role in the threat…'

'That didn't actually happen did it?' Yawned Asuka, haphazardly swinging her mug around, still half filled with cocoa. 'C'mon, a terrorist attack? What's the government keeping from us this time?'

'You should know,' Yui did yawn, wiping away her tiredness and intense eye strain caused by the behemoth setup. 'You were there.'

'I was?'

Yui cocked her head slightly at this.

'Yeah.' She offered, 'you were.'

Asuka's eyes flickered in the sunlight.

_436_

She fell out of her seat. Unconscious before she hit the ground.

* * *

_S_ubject 435 was no different to the others, a teenage girl chosen from mental institutions across the land, she reacted like the others and lasted about the average. As of yet, we have not uncovered any data insofar we could successfully establish neutralization rings around The Specimen and lure it into the project. So far the facility has given us little more than failures and bloodstained clothing. Recommend new method of testing aside from the thought induction process currently used.

_The manager sighed, flicking his pen absent mindedly between fingers as he thought of what next to write. As soon as it became clear no thoughts would come he stopped and set down his pen, observing the final remains of the girl being mopped up._

_'All right, is subject 436 ready? Testing begins in five.' He yawned, leaning back in his chair, 'and I need lunch.'_

_He spoke to no one and no one replied, yet the concealing veil around the spare tank lifted at his command._

_436 was different, he knew it. He had known it for a while._

_But he'd never seen it. Now it hung suspended in Formaldehyde, barely ten feet from his face._

_'Jesus…'_

* * *

_Asuka._

_~Aaaasukaaa~_

_~Wake up~_

Her eyes failed to open, rather they clenched, screwing shut in a form of discomfort people could only guess at.

'Well she's stable at least.' Sighed Drew, checking his watch. The rest of the paramedics were in the corner taking a cup of coffee while he sat with the girl, doing his best to comfort her parents. Which he was failing most spectacularly at doing. 'She isn't going to die in the next week at least. But once she burns through her carb and lipid reserves we'll have limited options.'

'Why not drip feeding?'

Drew laughed. 'Drip feeding her would be pretty hard, considering her blood flow has slowed _that_ dramatically. We could shove a tube down her throat but she'd probably spew it back up.'

'I doubt it.' Frowned Yui. 'It's not that hard to feed an unconscious person.'

'Well she may be unconscious, but it's unlike anything I've seen before.'

'How?'

Drew placed his hand on his chin, thinking back to what he'd noticed.

'Well judging from the breathing and heart rate I'd say that she is actually unconscious, like you said. But -bear with me on this one- I get the feeling that something inside her isn't.'

Yui placed her hands on her forehead.

_Contamination. It's a given._

'Yeah…-'

Asuka's eyes flipped open.

'Well there she is.'

Asuka turned over on the ground, her eyes wild and staring and…

Grey?

'Jesus.' Drew gasped, watching as her mouth grew wider and wider, inhaling breath after breath of oxygen.

Then came the screaming.

Relentlessly she thrashed about, screaming her lungs out across the hall.

'Just stop!' Yelled Yui, 'stop!'

* * *

'To truly understand the nature of the attacks, Tokyo-3's top scientists have been assessing damaged areas and watching for possible threats in the near future…'

The boy sipped his coffee, freshly brewed every morning by seemingly no one. In the corner the TV hummed and flickered with the news feeds passing through it. On his lap the ever-present cat sat, licking its paws self-consciously.

'Well, sucks for them.' He yawned, flicking over to an episode of The Amazing World of Gumball. It was easy to ignore for him, his location was nowhere near where the epicenter of the so-called 'terrorist attacks'.

A few minutes later he checked his watch, standing up to scratch a butt itch.

7.54 AM

_Good, good. I can miss a day of school._

He looked back down at his seat. Or where his seat should've been, but rather where a rather satisfied cat was sitting, smug with its efforts while splinters of wood rained down around it.

'Fucking cat!'

* * *

_His fingers glided softly over the walls, feeling the minute bumps play beneath his fingers, gently rubbing off dead skin and other nondescript materials._

_'This is it.'_

I'm finally free.

From the pain.

_The coffin rose slowly into position above the six foot hole, deep black sides glistening in the reddened sunlight._

_With a solemn and slight nod, he returned to his duties._

* * *

'Shinji? Wanna come out now?'

'No!'

Shinji looked at his hands, eyes wild and staring.

_They can't make me._

He giggled nervously, running a palm across his forehead, only to find it come back down covered in thick red blood. He held a knife, stained with blood and juices.

'Come out!'

'No!' He yelled, even louder.

His head flung down between his hands, he tore, scratching the scalp, warping his features and dragging his eyes into a mindless jiggle.

_Nonono. Nonononononono._

* * *

The boy yawned, getting off the couch next to his former chair. He yawned.

'Man, these shows suck.'

* * *

'GO AWAY!' He yelled.

There was a crunch, a sound like a rock falling into a pool of mud.

* * *

The TV wavered before shutting down, going black and dead before his eyes.

* * *

And then silence.

* * *

_The world, bright, welcoming, like an embrace, all consuming light and all consuming warmth, more like the reaches of heaven than the godless world it really was, now devoid of Angels, rife with the devil of man, all consuming, like the light and warmth, but self destructive._

_Like the human body, man will continue to consume until all that is left is themselves._

_And when that happens._

Well, let's see.

* * *

_PAIN._

Asuka writhed, arching her back once more as her eyes grew duller, she screamed, a screech of piercing agony and wailing pain.

SORROW.

Her eyes were grey now, barely more than the eyes of a blind man.

THE PENALTY OF HELL IS TO LIVE AS YOU ONCE DID.

Sight deserted her once more.

NOW LI-

Blackness.

* * *

…

'Did it work?'

Drew stood back from his work, the girl was splayed out across the floor, her head skewed to the side. In his right hand Drew held the chair with which he had silenced the girl.

Yui sighed.

'Yes…'

_Thank god._

* * *

**TRANSFER IN PROCESS…**

**ASUKA. S.**

**TRANSFER FINALIZING…**

**ASUKA. S.**

**TRANSFER COMPLETE.**

_The manager stood back, watching as the pipes and tubes pulsed with unseen energy, as the monitors flickered and wavered, as unknown messages flickered briefly through his mind while the facility crumbled around him. He stroked the glass tube, feeling the minute scratches and cracks, unseen to the naked eye, but all too obvious to his feelings._

_'Beautiful.' He uttered._

_A final and fitting utterance for the man, who. within a few seconds, was lying crushed beneath the rubble of the facility._

* * *

The boy woke up. He'd had a nightmare.

The nightmare had been vivid.

Real.

The nightmare had scared him, messed with his head and most of all had thrown him.

He looked at his hands, not clawed, like in the dream, but normal.

He looked at his sheets, not burning, like the dream had dictated.

But wet.

'Ah shit.'

**ABRUPT END**


	5. Chapter 5

The teacher, a drone, no more than a fly going on about the life that had deserted it. The pupils, sheep living daily with the conundrum of wanting to conform and rebel at the same time. The classroom, the universe in which the world of the school thrived in.

The student, Shinji Ikari, staring at the back of the classroom towards the one empty desk in the class, was wondering why the desk was always empty, but also wondering at the odd pattern of clouds in the sky. They looked like cats, he decided, white cats bounding through the air on whisper of vapor. Lit brightly by the red-tinged sun in the background. His pen twisted lazily about his fingers in his absent thought, showing the world his mental patterns and fluxuations with the minor nuances in the angle of spin.

The day was a normal one, it was always destined to be one by the fate Shinji knew so badly. Time went by as it did, and people acted completely and utterly, boringly even, normal.

The day was going to be a normal one, but Shinji could not but help wonder about the ways it could go; like a nagging itch in the back of his mind this wonder stayed, nagging him throughout the schoolday until he had had enough.

'Damn this,' he sighed, looking at his desk. His pen clattered onto the wood, and he resigned himself to whatever boredom the schoolday would bring him.

The bell rang.

School's out.

'Huh.'

* * *

The walk home was long and arduous. Lit by millions of photons who had lived for millennia to taste eight minutes of freedom, and heated by the rotting corpses of these photons' forefathers, who were being wept for back on the sun by their grieving widows and children, who were no doubt on their way to being free from the sun's clutches. Of course what they didn't know was that on the way to Earth the photons had cheated several times with other, brighter, more radiant and vivid photons from other stars.

Shinji felt a little raindrop, a prick on his arm.

The twist is;_ It wasn't a raindrop_

Spooky.

* * *

The van sped onwards, fueled by a potent mixture of testosterone and blatant insecurity, the source of which being the three male occupants.

'Drive faster!' Yelled one, while another continued to scream behind him.

'It won't go any faster!'

'Damn! Can't this thing go any faster?'

'AAAAGH!'

'I just said it can't go faster!'

'Well try harder!'

'Fuck dude, this isn't a manual!'

'YEEEEEAAAAAARRRGH!'

'I never said I could read it!'

'That's not what I meant!'

'GGGAAAAAAHHHHH!'

'Dude! Shut the fuck up!'

'WHAAAAARRRGH!'

'DUDE!'

'Guys, keep it down up there.'

They all looked back, mid scream, at the only female occupant of the car.

'I'm trying to work back here, now the pickup should be just around the corner…'

The van tilted, a violent shuddering tilt that screamed 'IMMA KILL YOU!', while the screaming man began to scream.

Again.

* * *

It started as a faint hum, no more, but now it had grown, morphed until the purr had become a roar.

Accompanied by a scream.

Looking across the road, to the nearest hobo, Shinji thought for a second the hobo was making the noise.

But now it was too loud for that.

* * *

'He should be just up here…' The lady was calm and collected, much unlike the other occupants of the van.

'There he is!'

'Yeah! I see him!'

'AAAAAAAAAAGHHHHH!'

* * *

Before his eyes a black van pulled over, obscuring his view of the hobo. It had stopped dead, the engine still chugging away noisily to itself.

Shinji thought he could hear a struggle, and when the van pulled away, the hobo was gone.

* * *

'Wait…' The female occupant narrowed her eyes at the barely clothed and rank smelling new passenger. 'Who is this?'

'Uh…' The driver stopped, pulling out a card. 'Well if you turn this way, he kinda looks like him…'

'God dammit, turn around.'

As we all know, your life is determined by the actions you take, these actions are unknown to us, and it does bother us that we cannot predict our actions at all, so we gave it another name, to hide our embarrassment from other sentient races who could; among them the Moontards (the inhabitants of The moon), Marzasians (the inhabitants of Mars), Saturplanians (the inhabitants of Saturn), and Poops (the inhabitants of Uranus).

Their action that they took, suffice to say, could've been a bit better, now I'm not questioning the wiseness of taking a U-turn in the middle of a highly trafficked road, no, I'm merely saying, they could've gone a bit slower.

They tipped.

'Ah fuck.'

* * *

Four hours passed.

The occupants of the van were lined up in a row, each wearing a solemn expression.

Except for the hobo.

He was grinning like a madman.

Also Shinji.

He was in the back room, getting changed.

'How many times do I have to say…' Continued Misato, 'that van isn't a sports car! You can't turn a corner doing ninety! What were you thinking? Just think a- who is this?'

The homeless man grinned a toothy grin, and spoke.

'HUDhehujwanhehowppwe,' He started, 'quiescenceshjdoenan.'

'Uh…?'

The hobo looked around, confused, you could tell by the twitching of his little homeless beard.

'Your name. What is it?'

The hobo nodded, clearing his throat.

'To give a name is to give an identity, an identity suffices to tell people who they are, and I am a homeless man, so you may call me Harry the hobo, and might I quite simply add that it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.'

In the moments that followed Nerv gained a new tech specialist, a new best friend and a generally good guy.

'Anyway, you three,' She turned back to Maya, Hyuga, and Makoto (the screaming guy wasn't there, he was in fact the fanbelt of the van), 'you're lucky that the Angel is coming otherwise I would've chewed you out even more, but there're more important matters to attend to.'

Shinji emerged from the back room, clad from trachea to toenail in his plugsuit.

'And there you are, get to the Eva.'

* * *

Tentacles, a phallic body and a purple hide, the building blocks of something you would expect to see in Japan.

How fitting then, that it was in Japan, crawling slowly over the country side towards its inevitable goal.

* * *

**INITIATING TRANSFER SEQUENCE NO.2**

**...**

**SEQUENCE NO. 2 REJECTED... REROUTING**

**...REROUTING...**

**...REROUTING...**

**REROUTED**

**INITIATING TRANSFER SEQUENCE NO. 2**

**...**

**SEQUENCE NO. 2 REJECTED... REROUTING...**

_Among the ruins of the facility electronic squiggles and warbles sounded, falling on dead ears rather than dead ones. At the epicentre of the destruction stood a single glass column, filled with a orange liquid, housing nothing more than a foetal blob._

_'S...'_

* * *

_'Shinji, can you hear?'_

'Yes.'

His face was sharp and gaunt in the light, deflecting the reflections of the refracted and redacted radiation. The outside view was distorted from every view but the front; the tubular displays having bent the image so that the pilot could see all he would if he had been the one looking.

_'Just like we practiced then_.'

'Yes ma'am,'

Off in the distance, a slight flash of purple met with glowing whips of pink, it was truly the gayest Angel to ever walk the Earth.

* * *

'Target has breached the outer city.'

Within the walls of Central Dogma it was tense, silent, the second Angel attack in less than three weeks had taken much out of the staff and even more out of the city, with barely half of the defence systems operational and only a small fraction of that active.

'It's up to Shinji.'

* * *

Rifle held at arm's length, butt slammed against shoulder, sights lined up. The Angel was in full view, squid-like appendages flailing about.

_'Target to intercept in 20.'_

Twenty seconds it may have been, but it felt like four, the Angel made its way over the pavemented streets and up to the feet of the Eva, under fire all the while.

'Ah shit...' Said Shinji, as his rifle emptied. Momentary pauses could be fatal, he didn't know this, by lack of experience, all he caught was the flickering of pink energy rising up to meet him, and then...

_Silence._

* * *

'What's happened?'

Hyuga looked around, his eyebrows raised in shock.

'It's been...' He paused, 'decapitated?'

* * *

Back on the surface the scene was more prevalent, the thicker end of the spinal column stuck out of the neck of E-1. Sprays of thick red ichor painted the windows and walls of the surrounding buildings. Some distance away, the head of E-1 lay discarded within its own impact crater, a gory hole shoved through the front and out the back of it, ringed by melted armour and burnt flesh.

'E-' Shinji choked, 'Ckkk...'

_'Shinji!'_

He looked up, clutching at his forehead. The displays still showed the running feed of footage from E-1's head.

'Shit.'

* * *

_'S...' _

_There was a humming noise, as the program looped and looped, the now dead subject 436 hung suspended in the glass tube, around him the codes continued, mapping him onto the machines housed above._

**S...**

_The machines gave a splutter, spraying acrid smoke and showering electric fire across the landscape, it would continue to 'live' as it had before._

**GGGJJJJDDDD...**

_As far as life goes, it was either eternal, or immortal._

**I...I**

**I AM**

* * *

The waves clawed once more at the beach, dragging with it clumps of sand and dirt, trying to overcome its barriers.

_WE ARE_

* * *

She couldn't tell what it was, what had woken her from her sleep. But it was close, a hiss and a roar, the sound of machinery, definitely.

'Ergh…'

She strained to look through the glare of the sunlight, but she could tell that she was in a hospital room.

'Gah…' she moaned, straining to sit up, but failing.

'Whatever.'

* * *

'Okay, you people have two options.'

He couldn't wait.

'You can work quietly, or...'

_Or?_

'You can work in silence.'

_Great._

A slight glance at the clock.

Two hours left.

_Fuck._

* * *

'Crawlin'crawlin'crawlin' down on my knees.'

_Clunk_

'Clunkin'crawlin'crankin' babe don't stop me please.'

_Smas_h

'Smashin'grabbin'twistin'hurlin'bowlin' til the sun goes down.'

_Groaning rending bending trending_

'Crawlin' brawlin' fallin' mawlin'.'

The scene was simple. Blackness was the main filler of the steel plated tunnel, the sounds of hushed singing could be heard from within the barely visible silhouette of a Goliath.

_The replacement job had been simple, we remove the debris, then we add another one._

'Yeah, so simple...'

'Twas a sigh of boredom, up on the main screen the feed from the improvised 'head' (really just a ball of night vision cameras pointed everywhere). So far it had been very boring, just the bumping up and down with the natural movement of the Eva.

There was a reason for them crawling around underground, it wasn't just a kinky exercise for everyone's benefit. No. For five minutes earlier the massive writhing mass of tentacles and flesh had entered the underground shafts, now it was a painstaking crawl to its assumed location, where it had gone silent a few minutes before.

'Somethin' ain't right here...' Misato did sigh, a rather apt sigh of aptness.

* * *

It was no more than a flicker on the camera feed, until whiteness consumed the entire screen, blinding the night vision.

'There it is.'

Caught up below the thing was, tentacles slapping helplessly against the walls as it failed to drag itself up the walls of the maintenance shaft it had entered(Normally it would've been sealed against Angels, but it had been under maintenance, as is the purpose of maintenance tunnels). As Shinji looked down he felt a pang of pity, but that was gone as soon as he had decapitated the thing, covering his newly polished armour in red chunky gunky fluid.

'Done.'

_'Good, now get back here. Something's odd.'_

* * *

__The main square was aflutter with the noise of life, people going along their days with barely a care in the world. A tiny red pixel flashed up briefly in the upper right corner of the big screen, responsible for drilling the news into the city's inhabitants.

Then everything happened.

All at once, screaming, cars crashing, buildings sinking into the ground, klaxons, alarms, horns, sirens, wails of dying people. The city exploded with noise.

**I AM**

...

**AFRAID**

* * *

**END**


	6. Chapter 6

**GAME OVER-6 [Kind of]**

**The [short] Chapter from Hell**

* * *

The next day, his best friend came to school.

Oh yes, says the reader, what a surprise, might you take the more cancerous route you would take up the infinitely famous Nicholas Cage 'You Don't Say' Expression.

Well this is the significance.

She was pregnant.

Yes. Preggers. Knocked up, bread in the oven, carrying, call it anything you want.

Yes well maybe you could call it a little young, he certainly could have but unfortunately -for him at least- he had no idea how old he was.

Positively spiffing.

It was actually quite liberating, he pondered, you could simply claim ignorance of age if you go around town before the legal age.

Not that he'd want to.

Of course.

-Mhmm-

Yes.

Well it wasn't his kid. At least.

Or so he hoped.

* * *

_Being suicidal. Is the ultimate freedom. As a wise Anon once said._

_Once._

Quite honestly the opposite was now true for our troubled heroine -heroine, not heroin-; apparently her suicidal tendencies were the cause of her restraint. Her restraint to the hospital bed she was now restrained to.

At least that's what the report that had flicked briefly before her eyes had said.

At least it looked like a hospital room.

Yes, that did surprise her, her sudden eyesight, her sudden ability to be perfectly able as she once was, what surprised her even more was that no one knew who she was.

At least she knew something.

She knew she had to escape.

Even a retarded mule could figure that out, she wasn't in hospital, the people who looked after her weren't nurses, and she was definitely not alone.

'Mmph.' She gagged, choking briefly on her… gag, thrusting it with her neck further into her mouth. Quickly her teeth began to chew.

Then silence.

In silence the redhead plotted, furiously, for she knew she was running out of time.

* * *

The clock ticked over, as the slow and tempting movements clicked further, and further, towards the time she knew the 'nurses' she'd grown to despise with the same ardent passion that had ignited many a love and many a star would inevitably change shifts

Tick, tick, tick.

Closer to the nine o'clock mark, closer to her goal, closer and closer and closer until…

Click.

Nine o'clock. Time to move.

Her eyes narrowed. And she tore loose of the bindings.

She was free, free at last.

* * *

Her eyes narrowed. And she tore loose of the bindings.

She was free, free at last.

Her roars filled the air, spraying blood across the landscape and thrusting blocks of noise into mere mortals' ears, she was screaming with the power of a god.

Her ears.

_HER EARS._

'What-' She gasped, as more pained howling filled the atmosphere.

She forgot who she was, forgot where she was, and she ran to the windows, tearing away the plastic venetian blinds.

It was horrific, but at the same time glorious, proud, liberating.

A lone figure stood against the artificial night light, blood covering its top half, the armor of Eva covering the bottom half.

'Oh shit.'

Then she woke up.

The time was five to nine.

She began waiting again.

* * *

The escape went by easily, excepting the overly curious patient in the next ward which she'd had to silence quickly with a pair of iron IV poles.

_HEY! YOU! Watcha doin?! Get me out of here at least._

_Crunch._

_And the man lay silent._

She was on the final stretch, running up the corridor towards the eerily familiar exit, marked with EMERGENCY EXIT.

The time was three minutes past nine, and she'd killed a man.

_KILLED  
_

But there was nothing for it, she just ran on, the rivets on the door glinted suggestively in the moonlight, each one more and more visible with every passing moment.

_Keep running._

The door rushed up to meet her and

_Moonlight. _

She was free.

_No…_

Free at last.

_What the hell?!_

She gazed down from her point on the peak, down the steel pyramid and across the darkened green landscape.

A single word stared at her, mocking her, destroying her.

_NERV._

_God is in his heaven, all is right with the world._

'No, no… what? This isn't right, this isn't…' she paused, her hand covering the right side of her face and her hair falling down to cover that.

She screamed, screamed no at the top of her lungs. Her throat tearing and scratching with the effort.

And as she screamed, someone heard, far away, across the universe. Someone heard.

* * *

He woke up, he'd heard screaming, he was sure of it.

'Who's there?" He asked, mumbling his phrase to the world in general.

He didn't expect a reply. He certainly didn't expect a paw to the face and a scratch on the forehead.

But he got one.

'Fucking cat!'

**END**


	7. Chapter 7

**Game Over-7**

**Crescendo**

* * *

****_The crescendo._

_He knew it, knew of it, his fingers had worked it for years while the ivory had given out noises not unlike a rhino in heat dying._

_But now he was the crescendo, a crash, a roar, the voices and howls of demons and ghouls. His voice multiplied a million times and sent into a single wave, a single wave of pain. His pain, the pain of a thousand suns dying in the midst of a galactic storm. The pain of loss. He'd lost something, something so very important, something too important for him to be able to understand or even comprehend._

_The voice inside him cried out._

_He closed his eyes, too weak to go on. _

_And his bindings fell off._

_Then he screamed._

* * *

He woke up.

The dreams were getting more vivid, as if they were a wave and that wave was now crashing upon him.

'Geh.' He mumbled. His eyes staring into the blood red eyes belonging to the resident cat. Gradually his eyes began to look past the cat and at the wall. 'Aw no… really?'

Scratches covered the wall from top to bottom, gradually forming the outline of bases and complex geometric shapes.

Kanji.

'Oh come on! I can't even read Japanese.'

The window barely made a noise as he threw the cat into it from his bed, half hoping it would fall through and from that point forward stay away.

But of course it didn't.

He looked around himself, having migrated into the master bedroom since realizing that he did live alone. The room had white washed walls, white art deco furniture, white sheets, white pillows, a white carpet, white everything, you name it, it was white. It was if it was trying to be something pure until he'd blundered in and ruffled the sheets.

'Geh.'

He was too tired to think, so he fell back into the sheets.

It was a Sunday, and the cat proceeded to sit on his face.

'Fuck _everything_.'

* * *

It was, indeed, a Sunday, a lazy day by all means.

He simply sat, staring at the blank screen that made up his TV, he hadn't even bothered to turn it on. It was simply a blank screen, which by all accounts was not exactly exciting. He twiddled his thumbs for a bit. Then turned his attention to the cat.

ಠ_ಠ

He stared, staring into the eyes of his feline foe for which fallacies befell and folded formostly from fun to foxy.

ಠ,,ಠ

It stared back.

He began to spout stream of consciousness.

'Shit whaddamigonnadotoday…' then ' I wonder how that pregnant girl is…' and so on and so forth.

* * *

The pyramid stretched out below her, still lit dimly by the artificial moonlight. It glimmered, mechanically, as the lights on the roof of the cavern flickered rhythmically with the flicker of the stars above them.

_HEY! YOU!_

She jolted, shocked forwards by the cry. There was someone behind her.

She turned.

Retches befell her as she simply stared at the scene before her. The man was there, his right eye pierced with a steel rod, no, not his eye. The entire right side of his face was gone,splattered across the wall behind him, greying chunks of brain matter. The other rod was embedded in his side, bits of gristle and bone surrounded it as though it'd been trapped by some gory spider's web. Blood was splattered out across the side of the pyramid. With bits of decaying skin and the rotten white chunks of eye, mixed slightly with a blue tinge of the iris.

She fell.

And fell.

* * *

She fell for what seemed like an eternity, tumbling down the cold, harsh surface of the pyramid. Watching as a minute cloud of dust billowed out from behind her.

Then nothing.

Her face hit ground.

'U-' She uttered, before falling into unconsciousness, calmly watching as a pleasant white filled her vision.

* * *

_Blood, the blood of millions. Blood that stretched out into the horizon. Blood that reeked of life that it shouldn't possess. Her nostrils recoiled and she fell back onto the blood soaked ground, she shrieked as pain overcame her, unseen and unknown injuries mocked her._

_Her ears were muffled by the pain, and all sound barely a quiet squeal. But she heard._

_Screams, getting louder and louder as a funnel of blood sprayed up from the middle of the ocean. She strained her eye, trying to see, as if there were anything to see. But she searched for it nonetheless, searching for something to see._

_Then she saw it._

_A faint silhouette, amidst the funnel of red._

_And then more screaming._

* * *

**I AM AFRAID**

**AFRAID**

**HELP ME**

**HELP ME**

**HELP ME**

**HELP ME**

**...HELP ME…**

The engineers and combatant alike simply stared as the words flicked back and forth over the T-3 news board (caught on a very shaky camera). And as the words themselves were encroaching across the edge of their own main display.

'What… what is it?'

'I thought I could've… there was something before, but no. It's sealed. We've been invaded by an Angel.'

'Aw shit.'

'But there was something.'

'Oh awesome, I can't wait.'

Akagi furrowed her brow, and brought up the minute bit of history that would forever be stored within the MAGI database.

It was no more than a small flicker of no-colour among the blue.

Katsuragi stared for what she considered a while, before giving up.

'What is this, what am I seeing?'

'Well _this…_' She enlarged it further. 'Means that it was briefly of human DNA structure…'

No response.

'I just thought it was interesting.'

Still no response.

'Whatever.'

She turned back to her screen.

'Pilgri-'

She never finished. As a pair of black, icy hands reached from the monitor and entrapped her within their cold grasp.

The bridge was silent.

**HELP ME**

**I DON'T WANT THIS**

**HELP ME**

**STOP ME**

**HELP ME**

**PLEASE**

…**SOMEBODY HELP ME…**

**KILL ME**

* * *

**DAMAGE CONTROL**

* * *

_It's been a few hours…_

Shinji hung, he'd been left hanging, stuck in the middle of a network of pipes and shafts that even Mario probably couldn't navigate his way around.

At least he still had his umbilical cable, god knows what he'd have done without it; around the smooth shafts and pipes there were nary a space large enough for Eva to get a stable footing, so he could dismount.

'Ack. The suspense is killing me.'

He lay back, waiting for an end.

**END**

* * *

Nah, that'd be shitty.

* * *

There was a sound, something like a gurgle and a sputter.

Through the cameras he stared into the blackness of the abyss below him, his situation was hanging on a thread, if he were to move he'd fall. But if he didn't, whatever was below would get him.

Something moved.

No.

It moved.

The darkness.

_Oh no, oh no… nonononono._

He pounded the walls with his fists, that of Eva's, that is, searching for a handhold, something to climb with, something.

_Just something._

The shadows spun beneath him, rising up, like the fires of some ink stained hell, to meet him, and like a tidal wave, the shadows trapped him.

* * *

'Hm, such a boring day…' He mused, throwing a ball against the wall.

* * *

The blackness was something of a tornado, whirling around her head, snapping back the mounted cameras and throwing them into the abyss. A malformed, horrific head stared out, green eyes wild with pain as the dark clawed up between them and the skin, clawing inside

_INSIDE_

her head, messing with her brain.

Her armour, her life, it was stripped away, thrown into the darkness below, then she knew what it was to be mortal. Then the darkness surrounded her more, crushing her like a vice.

She hunched over, she should've been falling, but she didn't. Her gnarled hands reached around and slammed the tube back inside her as the darkness forced it out.

Her arms broke, rendered useless by the storm, the tube fell.

And she knew real pain.

The roars of a mortal filled the shafts, echoing around the concrete walls.

Then came the light.

_Red, like blood._

**END**


	8. New Chapter

**Who am I.**

I'm me, pretty much it really, other than that, I'm just a kid, normal, average, regular, ordinary, well... At least I was, up until four years ago, when this whole thing blew up in my face like an IED in- on second thoughts it's probably best not to joke about terrorism, I mean, two massive towers were too fallic for the islamidudes, and look what happened to them. Well that was uncalled for. Poor dudes, whoever the dicks belong to. Aaand there we go, a paragraph on and already a 9/11 joke. Oh joy.

Mhm, well... Ah yes, I was at school that fateful day, as on any other day, uncomfortably hot, boring, and the bitch of a teacher wasn't holding anyone's attention, let alone mine. Ah yes, there is an explanation for the emphasis, but that should come later. Right after I finish telling you my story of this day, a mid summer one, in a room that severely lacked air conditioning, or windows for that matter, just one door.

Hang on, is that legal? Doesn't that violate some law somewhere? Anywhere?

Bugger.

Anyway, that day I happened to be specifically bored, such is routine, about the maths, it was my turn out of the class to take responsibility for being bored in math. It's a convoluted system, but to save further explanation, the week's roster was as follows, Ribgi did English, Jones (actual name Elvis, but we already had an Elvis so that's that really, poor bloke.) Sophie did social studies, which suited her, and finally Kate, ptoo, did science.

This system allowed the rest of the class to operate with relative ease and interest in the class, such as logic dictated, and it rotated every week so everybody could get a healthy dose of good ol' boredom. It was, or rather the people were, chosen as follows, the time the people were decided, a meeting would occur between the class elders, chosen by a rigorous test of tic tac toe, hopscotch, and foursquare, and we'd play those games specifically; they were chosen by the younger elder (the youngest kid whatever classmember knew of). From there the oldest of the younger elder's sibling's friend would tell the youngest elder elder the games for choosing the roster of the non elder except on Tuesdays elders, who would delegate to the youngest elder elder elder, who would bake a cake with the games inside.

I should know, I was an elder once, I ate a lot of cake and got fat. Then I lost it. As is tradition of the traditional fat ex youngest elder elder of the circle of younger elder elders and the youngest elder's cousin's partner's dad.

We smoked a lot of weed back then, or ate it baked in brownies, one or two occasionally ending up on the teacher's desk.

Oh boy, what a day that was. What a day.

Ah the old days.

Anyways, there I was, sitting round being bored, heat letting sweat pour from my pits to the floor. I dunno what I was thinking, something possibly along the lines of 'kill me' or 'kill her'. Whatever it was, it wasn't nice. As the teacher wrapped the lesson up the normal high Of interest would flow through me as Kate, ptoo, slumped over like a stuck Cherokee. Or an Inuit, one of the tribal peoples who got fucked over.

Oh we are going full throttle today aren't we, next thing you know I'll be joking about cancer of the AIDS and black people.

Fuck it, you all suck, and with that out of the way, I think it's time for

**The new CHAPTER**

And so the teacher droned, on and on about whatever form of physics she found attractive on that particular day, whether it be particle or nuclear, astro or cosmo, AMERICAN or Russian... Geh, the point is, she never really taught anyone anything about nuffin', unless it suited her. The previous year we'd had, by stark constrast, a clown. Literally, the teacher was training with a circus, as a clown, of course as I mentioned before. so in the end we hadn't learnt anything that year either, but the lessons were a hell of a lot funner.

Overall the system or boredom had been useless for two years, but the weed man, the weeeeeed.

Anyway there I was watching the board with the intensity of a black dwarf, by which I don't mean an African midget, but a dead star, which ruined the simile. God, right about now the yummy mummies of the world are really stating to piss me off, what with their protesting and such. So, the board is normal, nothing to see there, but then, how do I put this, there was a sudden chill, and the room went a darker shade of grey. It was appropriately ominous,

I'm looking around, wondering what's happening, if anyone else notices it, when I catch the eye of a girl whom I've never seen before. She smiles and waves, something too human and normal for the class, then the room goes back to its delightful poo grey. Or beige, beige works as well.

Everyone hates that colour, let's be honest here, sure it's a good neutral for more vibrant colours, but nobody buys a beige suit, nobody gets a cat because its beige. It is the fart of colours, awful and repulsive, yet without it, we'd explode, which brings us to the next thing.

I look back after the teacher asks me some bull s. question, hoping to catch her eye, but she isn't there, and so I return to ky work, in air quotes, wait "work", stupid transfer of mediums. Brain to paper, never works right.

I would later come to realise that the girl had merely popped out for a sec.

How funny it all seems, as I sit here on my recliner, staring at the wall, watching the fire burn away my youth, ah, but unfortunately it was not funny at the time, no, it was awful.

Awful.

I saw that same girl in a dream that night, as I sat passed out on the beach, joints everywhere, bongs shattered around me like some sadist ritual. It was a very interesting sight, which is what the fuzz said as they fined me for littering, and fortunately not much else.

The tide had washed the evidence away. Ah the old days.

LIGHT FLASHES, IT DOES NOT, I AM TALKING ABOUT MYSELF. WHY. WHY. WHY.

: SO WHO AM I

* * *

What could possibly be described as tears rolled down her face, though she'd never admit it. And what could be described as uncertainty and anxiety gripped her body as tightly as her nails gripped her thighs. Though, again, she'd never admit it.

Why couldn't he hear her? For all her shouting and screaming, for all the nails broken and blood across her hands, she was as invisible as air to him. already had she run through all the possibilities, yet the only one that made sense was that he didn't want to see her.

But why not?

Her grip on her reality was slipping, more likely it was being ripped out and brutalized.

What would become of her if she-

'Dude,'

She looked up. Rigidity straightening her, the emotion draining away to a part of the brain she'd never admit existed.

'We're like, stuck here, so, like, if you're like, not doing anything, we've decided to go mad.'

The other one in the we piped up, 'Yeah, it'll be cool,'

She stared.

Her vision went white.

* * *

'Hey,'

'Hey!'

It was no use, he decided, whatever the boy was doing it was undoubtedly more important than his shouts. It must have been, after all, he had been in the same spot for quite a while, watching with dead eyes as person after person streamed past. Occasionally one or two would emerge from the maelstrom and stand at the invisible threshold, staring out from an empty brown hood; at first he'd been curious as to what was beneath, but terror had replaced the inquiry as time had dragged on.

What could it be?

One of the hoods stood forward, and began to stare at him. Quickly he turned back to the triangle of grey space between the three walls, and the three, make that five, people trapped within.

The other boy was closest, but hadn't been able to hear him.

He decided to try again. Lifting himself off his arse he heaved, ramming torn, bloodied knuckles into the invisible walls around him. But yet again, only the echo of a sad memory greeted him. Despair sounded in his mind.

**WHO AM I**

He backed away, eyes wide, asking it its own question, 'Who are you?',

He'd been there for what must have been months, staring; occassionally, his physical health declining, his mental health descending rapidly. He would have gone mad but the scene around him was simply too boring; How is one supposed to be a fish if nothing wants to be the water?

A dilemma.

'I give up.' He grumbled into his chest.

And so he gave up.

Pooh.

* * *

Asuka had decided to be yachting in the carribean; She had decided to be a sea captain, and had found two other chaps who had agreed to be a boat and an ocean. Though she couldn't tell if they actually existed or not.

Not that it mattered.

Yes, she thought, being mad was certainly more fun. She tugged on the wheel, hurting his scalp as she did so, before sailing into a black and grey horizon. The wind at her back, and a cat which was a bird fluttering around her.

Suddenly something shook her into sanity; a cat fluttering? Surely not, even the best impressionist cats could only manage a a rather short sighted and sick wee flopple, before quickly crashing to the ground; the sound quickly dieing afterwards of cancer. And AIDS.

But then she realized she was mad, and carried on. Fluttercat and all.

So many hours passed, until the yacht got bored and decided to be a plane, however, Asuka did not have a pilot's license and the adventure quickly ended in tragedy.

All this he watched with a mild amusement and a massively enormously gigantic sense of frustration, he was stuck, and no one could see him.

He was stuck, forever?

The situation certainly seemed hopeless. What could he do? He was perplexed.

And so he sat, and stared at her.

Memories and memories flooded past him as he stared, still perplexed.

'I miss you.'

* * *

A name, what is in a name? A sweet scent, or memories past, neither of these things. For what could be in a name but a title?

This one's name was different, it sparked a curiosity in himself, and so in others it ran, coursing like new blood in fresh meat.

Suddenly he knew it, and he was standing, his surroundings coloured in bright circles of red outside. Below him he saw a red giant, and knew death was imminent. The burning of his flesh confirmed this, the tingling numbness of his heart spoke it, the writhing blue slime around a city he did not recognize, but felt familiar, it told him.

He blacked out, and found himself in the snow, but saw the arms he moved were not his, instead he pushed and heaved with a black monstrosity that yearned for freedom, bones stuck out at odd angles across his body.

Death.

Life, he saw the birth of his son, cursed by his heritage, or perhaps blessed, perhaps both.

He pondered it as the ground gave way beneath his feet and a new world appeared, its surroundings tactile, feeling, sounding out, the only thing he could feel or think before his mind dissolved and memories that were(n't) his flooded his brain.

'All things return,'

She said.

* * *

'Hey boy,'

He looked up briefly, even from his hiding spot at the back he could see that impatience was sketched upon his teacher's face.

'H?' He grunted.

'Didn't you hear the notice?'

'?'

He could feel the class's eyes boring into his head.

'God Dammit... You, move, now.'

'Oh... Right,'

Of course, the notice, how could he forget? Only a couple times already had the notice sounded, but it should have been enough. At least for him. Noting this, he left gracefully (he tripped over the threshold and fell arse over tit.). And proceeded slowly and calmly (he almost broke his bike in his panic) to the substation. Where he waited.

And waited, it was truly a shit time for the power to go out. Truly shit.

And waited, until he wasn't waiting and the train had come, by which time he could tell he was incredibly late.

For the thing, you know... The thing.

He hopped on, and the crucial five minute journey ended, a short while later it begun, this method of transport cut out a significant amount of time, and before he knew it he was standing outside the test cages, his torn to shit plugsuit hanging in rags from his hands.

'You're late.' Came a voice.

He was totally late.

He looked up, for staring back down at him was the all too familiar face of the good doctor Akagi. He gulped, had he not been eating a well balanced diet of fibre, carbs, fat and protein he would have turned into stone.

Either way, he was petrified.

'Shinji and them have been waiting for hours to get started, and you're still faffing about like a chicken without a head,'

He said nothing, but cocked his head. Them?

Seeing clearly he was either too thick or too out of it to recognise what she had said, she ushered him through with a sigh.

* * *

He saw soon enough what 'them' meant. And considering the other boy had been absent the days beforehand, along with his friends, it came as no surprise that another pilot had arrived, however all he saw of her was the word two sprayed in giant red letters on the outside of the test plugs, before he himself descended into the plug, sprayed appropriately with the words negative one. Something he hadn't quite figure out yet; as he piloted unit 03.

Soon the capsule filled up, red hot poison flowed down his throat, before his lungs were saturated with a life giving sludge. And the nightmares began again.

* * *

'So how's he doing?'

'Who, Shinji?'

'No, the other one, torn plugsuit.'

'Surprisingly well, scores have almost levelled out,'

'God, remember his first time?'

'What?' Maya, and the rest of the bunnies, allowed themself a laugh, 'When he scored negative? I wonder if he gets it yet.'

'Yes, well, we can't be complacent, next week's test day. We need him past thirty points,'

Ritsuko slapped Maya's chair before standing straight, her eyes now averted from the data, 'Bring him in tonight and tomorrow for more tests, he needs to learn, or the director will have our arses,'

'Yes ma'am.'

* * *

He couldn't keep it in any longer, he had to say it, either that or explode.

Asuka was trying first impression possible; certainly as appearance goes he certainly wouldn't say she was ugly, but given her pose, she did seem rather...

Large.

Of course as he was pondering this she found it necessary to jump down from whatever high position she'd managed to acquire, almost flooring him with a landing that was clearly forcibly clumsy; ie she chose to fall on him. Placing another tear into his wrecked plugsuit

'This thing's vintage man!'

Seeing she didn't really care he gave up reason and shook his head, she was being rather cold, and hadn't even said a word yet. However to her good fortune the boy simply brushed it off and extended his hand, a gesture of goodwill at the most, an interesting ritual at least.

And for a second she looked ready to accept it. Her hand had flicked up and almost touched his, before an indecipherable look crossed her face and she withdrew, leaving him hanging big time. Thus he internalized and came to the conclusion, she was trying.

She must have been.

'I'm-'

'I know exactly who you are, fourth child,' she said, 'and I have to say, I thought you'd be taller,'

With this she walked off. At barely five foot four, he pondered, what right did she have to call him, at five nine, short.

'Hey, wait!' Unfortunately by the time he turned she had left. Leaving him and his outstretched hand. One he'd sworn she had looked at a couple times, with that same expression, what was it?

The question seemed to echo around the steel cave like a screech of a bat. For all he knew that expression was all he had to go on while judging her.

It might have been all he needed.

* * *

Within the household belonging to the sprightly slightly irresponsible and frightfully energetic Misato, there was a scene unfolding which might have resembled a normal family, minus father or practical mother, plus manic depressive uncle and estranged penguin. It was a special night to them, as fate would have it, being Asuka's first night at the household. The atmosphere was jovial and the air stank of a rich concoction, that which occurs when good cooking meets stubbornly prepared instant ramen.

Within the fog of acrid stench the three and a half residents ate dinner, Misato talking at, rather than with, the other three of them. Asuka looked positively boinked, while Shinji had an air of much more numb acceptance. That which one requires when sharing a home with two women as volatile as themselves, while dealing with his own issues and trying to support the weight of the world on his shoulders.

He didn't really care, as his mind, soul, and body had been numbed by countless issues before. Any heat had soon turned to cold.

The penguin sat in the corner, adjusting the whiteboard with the register for who is and isn't a full person (it saved on rent), with a flick of his flipper he wiped the board and resumed rewriting the names down. A whiff of the stench soon came to him, and he did what any good penguin would do.

He fell over, and then asleep, amidst the warmth of laughter and terrible smells.

* * *

In stark contrast he sat alone, in a room cooled to an unnatural cold by a relentless AC unit. He gazed from his bed, at the dome around his abode, his body was beneath the shelter of the massive fortress, but his mind was elsewhere, in the sky above the dirt, in the gaze of the girl, in her expression.

What was it?

Like a strike it hit him, widening his eyes as he was forced to snap back to reality. It was an expression he'd seen before, in the cool reflection of his own face.

It was fear.

* * *

**END**


	9. Chapter 9

_He never thought of anyone as a bad person._

_Not really._

_Given his position, between saving the Earth and watching his life crumble before his eyes, there had been no time for pondering such subjects._

_Rather there had been all too much time for it. Thinking about the end, thinking about the start._

_Thinking about the colour red._

_There was something about it. Face down in his private hell it was all around him, he breathed and lived surrounded by it. Simply watching the water rush in from beneath him with each wave of nausea._

_The colour is a thinkable one, he decided. Nothing to be excited about._

_The tide rolled by one last time as he smelt the sea breeze, dead and cold but somehow alive, living and breathing in itself, somehow through the surface of blood he felt something._

_A thought? A plea?_

_Whatever it was, it was urgent, it was confused._

_It was getting angrier._

_Before his eyes, all the colours of his world faded, the smiling half head of his friend, the dismembered pale limbs severed from__its__body, they fade and bleach out, and in their place the white creeps in. And his world is lost. No more feeling of red water beneath his cheek. No more salty breeze invading his mouth._

_All there is, is whiteness._

Rage.

* * *

**A FRESH MIND  
**

* * *

'Meow'

The boy moaned in his sleepy haze, not able to make out the ceilings, or open his eyes for that matter, or turn himself over from when the pillow had flipped him to his cool side. Or move his arms, or move his legs. Why?

Because he had a cat sitting on his head.

Much like the floor, in its infinite ire, having a more than upset set of sheets on top of its face. Oh the way they had bickered while the boy slept, waking up the AC unit, and making the wardrobe cry into its shirts silently.

'Whatever.' He mumbled, and fell back asleep, the stench of cat arse across his hair, and by the look of things, there to stay.

* * *

_He saw hot cocoa, a steaming hot mug, twice his height, filled to the brim, beckoning to him with the promise of marshmallow and heat. He took this as a sign to realise he was extremely cold, so cold he had icicles hanging from his nose, yeah, and also his hands were blue._

_'Well this is convenient,' he chirped._

_He began to look up at the gleaming white emblem of warmth, and took a step forward. Noticing a drop in the already low temperature, he stepped forward more, knowing the cocoa would be his only salvation, reaching out for the heat of the mug of brown deliciousness. His hands began to freeze as he leaned forward, feeling the water in his body solidify. He reached, forwards, more, more, until eventually he couldn't reach further._

_He touched something, but due to the numbness of his hand he could only tell through the cracking of his ice cover. Through his icicle vision he hoped his hand had touched the cocoa, but something told him everything was about to go terribly wrong. _

_And it did; the temperature flew up, melting his world, and he fell, the ice no longer supporting his ridiculous pose._

_'Why!?' he yelled, tears of grief rolling down his face as he saw true horror, the white monstrosity on a white background, the huge forebringer of death and decay._

_'Fischer…' he whispered, seeing a massive freezer looming over him, half melted icecream dripping in clumps of disgusting unnatural taste all over his designer suitjamas which he only just then realized he had because that's how dreams work._

_'No…' He whimpered, gazing into its broken red eyes._

_'NO!'_

* * *

He awoke, his pyjamas, which consisted of a pair of jockeys, were falling off, drenched in sweat and reduced to rags.

Which left him just enough exposed for the embarrassment of having one of the female staff members walk in to be justified.

'Hey! No!' he yelled, grabbing the cat that had torn up his undies and tying it around his waist with its tail. 'Wait! Don't look!'

'No problem.' She sighed. 'You need to get to the cage for early morning training, you'll be leaving by 6 and at destination by 8,'

'Destination?'

She offered a wee smile, 'You'll understand why later.'

'Oh, oka-'

Blackness.

* * *

He came to in the backseat of a slightly more than dilapidated old bus going who knows where. Sounds of a century old machine bounded around him, hurting his ears, while within his mind self pity began its busy shift. As he reached to scratch an itch, he realised something.

His hands were bound, his back hurt, his feet and face itched, his crotch was burning, and of course he discovered a rather large catalogue of other assorted ailments and problems he was suffering from.

He also had a rather large weight on his shoulder, the likes of which shook and jostled him, sufficiently annoying to cause an internal coup.

He looked to his left, and saw that the entire weight of the other pilot was propped against him (Shangi, was it?). He was most definitely asleep. At least, so said the snores coming from his drug congested lungs.

He kept quiet and stared ahead, wherever the bus was going he could only imagine.

While he did imagine where it was going, he quietly observed the ways the seats had been stripped of everything except a few sad looking clumps of foam and wiry looking springs. And he found himself just able to hear through the narcotic buzz in his ears the low moan of the engine, and the rush of air through the broken windows, of which the majority consisted. He could taste…

Ew, nevermind.

'Hey! You!'

He turned to his right, and saw a beast of a man, dressed in full riot gear, syringe in hand.

'Go to bread!'

It would be the last thing he heard for a good while, as the needle that had been silently placed in his arm released its lethargic payload.

'-bed… God dammit, one time to shine and I mess up my line.'

* * *

'Huh?'

He shook his head. Staring around him as the darkness began to fade.

'What's happening- wahh!'

He ducked, just long enough that the kick grazed past his head. He dodged another and another, worn down slowly until he collapsed under his own weight. He looked wildly about; he was in a small room, it appeared to be a makeshift gun range, with targets lined up against one of four brick walls. Fearing for his life he kicked out at the wall nearest, where his bare feet made contact with red brick and he slid into his assailant, taking him out. Of course when he sat up and looked around he found himself no longer in a gun range, rather, he was in a field, on a plane with no obtrusions for miles around.

The attacker was still there, along with a crane and several personnel who were either packing down the room or taking notes, at this point he realised he had nodes stuck to his chest and a clamp on his finger, with this he ripped them out and left them on the grass. Leaving them feeling slightly dejected.

He was incredulous, until he saw the good doctor standing in a corner observing some unintelligible readings on her screen.

He gritted his teeth.

'Hey doc!' he yelled, stomping over. She looked up at him, however not before he'd knocked over her set up and unleashed a barrage of questions into her face.

'What the duck man?'

A family of ducks just so happened to be passing by at this moment, and so offended by the comment they unleashed their payload onto his shoulders.

Good luck sighed for a moment, it couldn't stand these kinds of jobs. Either way it hurried to the boy, now covered in bird shit, and stuck with him for a few seconds, until a steel girder almost fell on him, at which point lady luck took her leave and went to see her lover, snake eyes Mc'bad.

A true waste of good luck.

'We're just set up out here for a while to get you prepared for the activation test coming up.'

'Huh,' he put his head back, that made sense. 'No wait.' He put his head back down, resuming his anger, 'Why'd you drug me asshole?'

She shrugged.

'Man that's bullcrap,' he sighed, before storming off. 'I'll get you for this!' he yelled into the sunset.

'Fuck you!' the sunset yelled back.

* * *

The next four days went by relatively fast, wake up at four, sit in a pod til eleven, finish the day at eight after gym work and cardio.

All to no real avail, his health improved, but alas his scores did not, all still barely over the starting threshold; in other words not enough for a real event. All the while this was going on, the purple and black smudge on the horizon gradually became less and less visible as a large dome was erected around it.

Finally, Friday came, and He collapsed onto his bed, exhausted beyong recognition, aching in places which he was pretty certain didn't actually exist, and bleeding from sores that popped up at a moments notice, all the worse he realized he hadn't improved at all. All he had gained were large amounts of ruptured blood vessels and muscles which didn't exist a week ago.

Fortunately Shinji was there, suffering in silence as opposed to his very outward groans, now instead of one broken and bruised boy there were two.

He sighed, the activation was tomorrow.

'There is no way this could get worse,' he whispered, allowing himself that reprieve.

* * *

'What's happening!?' Ritsuko stood back, things had gotten a lot worse, now they were on the brink of catastrophe, as Eva succumbed to a brutal alien beating, this time coming from within.

'How the fuck should I kn-'

**BOOM.**

* * *

For all intents and purposes He felt good.

Real good, like a million volcanoes were going off all along his body, fire coursed through his veins. He felt ascended, briefly omnipotent. But there was something else.

Something...

'Inside me?'

He looked down, and the feeling went, replaced by abject grief and dread; he reeled at his fate, as a mixture of white and blue was spreading out from his chest. Slowly encompassing his body while a miriad of colours shone out around him.

'What...?'He queried, before being shunted forth into the place from whence the beasts of his suffering had spawned. 'Oh...' he slurred, 'This is some kind of joke isn't it?'

What came next was no joke.

* * *

Subject 354 gleamed in the wreckage, the light catching it as the thing shuddered and smouldered within its glass cage. There was no way around it.

The manager reached up, too many deaths. He undid the hatch at the front with his dying breath, and the embryo came flooding out along with the rich coloured liquid. Finally, it seemed, it was over.

It certainly was, for him at least. Crushed under tons of rubble, the manager groaned.

He then died

* * *

'Ack.'

The boy stood up, something wasn't right.

His bed lay behind him, the sheets ruffled, the alarm reading four o'clock, beeping in its dutiful manner. He caught a breeze, and stared at the window, the curtains were open, letting in the first rays of the endless summer's day. He looked back forwards, wondering if he should go for breakfast. Either way the door was open, beckoning.

It was a typical morning, in other words.

He started towards the door, his mind occupied with the strange dream he'd had, wondering what it could mean. A finch scurried past his foot, disturbed from its sleep by the incessant alarm clock, which had apparently shut itself down, and stopped by his feet.

He stared at the creature. It stared back.

'What? Something wrong with your eye bub?'

'Uh…' he gulped, 'No.'

'Whatcha looking at then.'

'Nothing.' He looked back, and the finch carried on about its business. He began to yawn, wiping the sleep from his eyes. However, something caught his attention, an unassuming silent nod of light into his eye, and he stopped.

A pale boy stood beyond the threshold, almost glowing in the dim light.

_Come._

He looked closer at the apparently flawless figure, trying to see through the mask of white. But all he could see were gems of blue where his eyes should have been.

'Are you…?' he stopped, unable to finish, silently scolding himself for the boys presence. _Are you what? God? Jesus boy get it together._

_Am I what?_

'Uh…' He stopped, the other boy smiled, a small smile, that smelled smiley. 'Are you okay?'

_Sure… So you coming or not?_

For a brief second he became a shoe gazer, wondering why he was suddenly dressed.

_Oh, this is a dream, isn't it…_

He sighed, even if it was, he couldn't see a way out.

_Come on dude._

He paused at length; _Why the hell not?_ He decided, and stepped through the door into whatever was lying in silent wait for him.

* * *

'So… what exactly am I looking at here?'

_Sh…_

He saw a small room materialising around him; he saw a black blob as it rose up in front of him, gradually morphing itself into a desk, he saw the room as it spun, and he found himself lying down, supported by a leather couch. The white boy was sitting in front of the desk, a door stood to their left, framing a smoke glass window.

He was in a psychiatrist's office, apparently the patient. Briefly he wondered why he was the one in psychiatry, considering he was probably the most stable person he knew.

That being said, an insane man rarely thinks himself to be mad.

_So… _The boy cast a blue look over a notepad. Obviously deciding something very important, such was his expression. _Tell me about yourself._

'Huh?'

_Tell me… When did the nightmares start?_

* * *

'What happened?'

Shinji looked around, his eyes wide and his brain shattered, the small bit of it that was working was busy deciding whether he was the only conscious person, or the only alive one.

He tapped on the display.

'Misato?'

Static.

'Anyone?'

Static.

He tried to look again, straining against the light decay of the explosion, yet he couldn't see anything that resembled the black unit. Only a pile of ash where the domed facility used to be, and a gaping tear in the ground leading up to the manned facility, a good mile away.

He stared at the crack, wondering what to do. It was benign enough, merely sitting there, occasionally spurting out clouds of ash and heat.

'Anyone…'

He sighed, collapsing back into his seat, thighs aching from the strain.

'Where'd you go…'

He paused, something had moved briefly in the screen.

'H-?'

**END**


	10. Lel

My heart lays in a hollow sack surrounded by tissue and my my lungs, it doesn't release chemicals, it doesn't think, nor speak, it just sits there, pumping away to itself until one day it stops working.

There is no little man inside, no magic, just a bundle of muscle and blood tirelessly beating its own drums.

And yet you still tell me it can skip, flutter, soar, fly, yearn, lurrrv, feel and send me in whatever direction I choose.

Well maybe it can.

AN OPEN HEART

It came from the dark, the abyss beneath him.

Four black limbs flailing, a mouth screaming, armour falling in dark chunks from a fleshy face with two, big, blue eyes.

It was a monster, and it struck terror upon those who saw it.

One of whom was unfortunately our young Japanese protagonist.

'Ac-' He barely managed the gasp, as he should have considering "his" throat was now locked in a steely vice, and "his" hands were trapped to his sides by some rather unsightly feet. He gasped, kicking out, but like a boa locking around its prey, the beast only tightened its grip.

'Someone-' He hacked, 'Help-'

It pulled back from him, howling, before smashing a rather hard skull down onto his face.

He reeled, cursing as blood fell from his forehead. He heard the howling as it came again, and it got in two more blows, before the internal battery ran out, a passive shield against a blow that would have resulted in a gory death.

Shinji groaned, and as the shroud of unconsciousness set in, he managed only one final word.

'-me,'

* * *

'I've had them ever since I can remember.'

And how far back was that?

The room throbbed in time with his speech, bursting with colour and light.

He felt sick.

'I-' he paused, 'I'm not sure. I mean, the first sync test.'

How far ago was that?

'About two weeks.'

Are you sure.

'Pretty damn sure,'

Ah, well shit. This has been a wasted exercise, you can go back now.

'Oh,' he sighed, 'Okay t-'

* * *

Shinji awoke. Coincidentally, so did he, as he and Shinji awoke, so did she. However, she was not in the same room as them, as they were in the same room, in a hospital, in the same area as where she was, but not on the same street. More or less in the same suburb. Surprisingly, he awoke in a hospital, surprising considering his injuries were nil. Shinji on the other hand was rather bruised, battered, torn up and whatever, like a rather sad, deranged, puppy dog at a bullfight.

'Hey.'

Shinji didn't speak for a moment. Before replying, rather open endedly.

'What?'

'Uh... No hard feelings, right?'

He heard a muffled groan from beyond the curtain separating their two beds, as Shinji continued to grind his face in his pillow.

'Okay, I'm leaving now.'

The boy got up and reached between the curtains, he fiddled around, before finally increasing the amount of morphine going into Shinji's blood stream. Satisfied, he signed the checkout form and began to sort of just wander around, he himself still under the effects of the drug.

A cat bounded between the ward's doors as he left, butt still exposed between the robe's flaps.

* * *

'He's the one who'll be staying with us?'

Note that were it a Latin sentence the -ne question ending would go with the he.

'Yup.'

Asuka looked perplexed, startled, and disgusted all at the same time, as the boy stood in the doorway, scratching his still exposed anus. Looking perplexed in the same manner she was.

'How did I... get here?'

Misato waved him off, smiling at him.

'We found you three miles out of town... Lying in a ditch... Making dirt angels while singing feeling good,' she paused, unsure whether or not to elaborate, shrugging, she continued, 'Luckily you still had your tracker attached.'

'Tracker.'

'Tracker.'

'Track-er.'

'Tr-acker.'

'Tracker.'

He scratched his butt a bit more.

'Tracker.'

'Yup.'

They paused.

'Where's Asuka?'

'Ah fuck.'

End

Epilogue

'You sure heal quickly.'

'yup'


	11. Chapter 11

_It towered over him._

_It was happening, that night, like every night; the thing had come back._

_He stared up at it, running through his mind the countless times he'd seen it, dreading what always came next as the ground around him turned black, and helplessness creapt into his heart._

_The only thing left were the eyes._

_Sharp, white eyes._

_'Help me-' he croaked._

_The white filled his vision_.

* * *

'Hey little penguin.' He croaked, lifting a limp hand onto the poor creature's head: Pen squawked. He gave it a quick rub and let it go about its business, bemused as he lay beneath a blanket of bent cans and crumpled packets.

It had been a week since he'd graced the Katsuragi household with his presence, and his activities since then encompassed sitting in the lounge while lazily eating and drinking foods the good doctor had specifically warned against.

It had been a good week.

'Hey,'

He turned, halfway through a packet of Doritos. It was Misato, looking rather concerned.

'You gonna do anything next week?'

'Maybe,'

Such is life in Tokyo-3.

* * *

**China's Chapter**

* * *

'Next week I would suggest actually following my fitness plan.'

Splutter.

'These scores are horrible! I mean seriously, you can barely keep up with Asuka!'

The boy wheezed, straining a cholesterol filled heart. It was a sad sight to see him run, face puffy, Dorito cheeks bright red, legs spinning over at a less than reasonable pace.

'Whoops.'

'Whoops indeed.'

The display flicked off, somehow seeming annoyed as it did so.

'Ah piss,' He sighed.

'Having trouble there, fatboy.?'

'Somewhat.' He coughed, ignoring the comment on his less than diminutive form.

'You can always quit, you know.'

Asuka turned, smirking. Millions of responses ran through his mind as he wondered why the normally mellow person he faced got so competitive around Eva. He opened his mouth as a suitable one popped into his brain.

'What? You mean like you quit y-'

He stopped, unsure if the lights had flickered or if his eyes were playing tricks.

'You see that?'

The lights dimmed once more, as if unsure about the meaning of it all, before they shut off, and the two were left in a cold darkness.

'What just happened?'

The ground began to shake.

* * *

Shinji stared up at the ceiling.

Had it always been so big?

The ceiling, that is. He thought, not an hour before he'd have been able to touch all four corners in the time it took a man on tramadol to pass a stool, but now... It just seemed to stretch, shooting far off into the distance until it disappeared into a mist that rose up in a circle on all sides, like an inverted horizon. He thought it over, ignoring the air quality of a room that has mist in it while being only a couple of square metres.

He shifted the bandage slightly, so that it stayed out of his vision, and the room cleared up; the mist was a mere perception, and the ceiling's unquantifiable enormity a result of that.

He said nothing, it seemed that once again the world was playing tricks on him. Just like the small humanoid peeking over the foot of his not exactly comfortable hospital bed.

In the dark that descended its eyes almost seemed to glow.

* * *

'I just lost them,'

'Hm?'

Ritsuko spun over to where Maya was rather discourtiously in a panic; and busily wrecking thousands of dollars of stuff.

'I just lost them- the Children I mean, the fourth and second children.'

She put her hands on her face. Akagi blinked.

'Well what do you mean?'

'How should I know?! They were there one sec then boom! They're gone,'

There was a blonde nod.

'Okay, let's not panic. Just...'

'?'

Stay calm, review the situation.'

She nodded.

'We just lost two children.'

'Right, important to the future of humanity type children.'

'And the other's in hospital,'

'Yes.'

They looked at each other.

* * *

He awoke. Trying to recall through the shadows what had happened.

The tremors had pushed him to the ground, he knew as much, but since then it was a blur of black and white. And a rather gross shade of yellow.

Coughing, he sat up.

And promptly banged his head.

'Ah FFf...! Oh, man, ohmanohmanohman. Ah-h. Ow. Ah, ouch.'

A 'Shh...' came across in response, spoken in hushed tones.

'Oh hey Asuka,' He whispered back.

'I said shut up, fatty.'

'You're a fatty.'

'Shut up!.'

There was a creak. He heard Asuka inhale.

A set of eyes peered over what He now saw was a dome of rubble, rather unfortunately, one which he (and on a lesser note, she)was trapped under.

'Ah arsecrack.'

The eyes came closer.

Asuka kicked him.

'You arse nugget.'

'You're an arse-'

He choked, and the world went a really ugly shade of yellow.

* * *

**Interlude**

* * *

Tsatsa was a niblit.

He was the best niblit there was, and was king of a tribe forty thousand niblits strong. His wife was believed to be the sexiest niblit on all of Niopiba. His son was world champion at tree climbing, the most popular sport on nibtopia.

Life was good, for the moment. However as they would soon find out, nilobia was about to be destroyed in a swoop of terror

As Tsatsa looked out o'er the landscape, he wept, his wife called out for help, curdling his blood, as more fire rained down across the world.

His son washed up against his feet, face half gone, his once proud body ruined and mangled.

'Why...' he asked.

'Why!?'

As the boy continued in the eighteen stage decontamination cycle, He thought he heard a wee scream, coming from the nether regions.

'Hm.'

He scratched himself.

'I need to wash more.'

* * *

'God. What an ugly shade of yellow.'

The boy stirred, to his surprise he found himself sitting at a table, the spread set out on a rather tacky plastic chair and table kit for a tea party.

'Awa?' He mumbled, subconsciously pouring himself a cup of yellow tea from a yellow teapot.

Of course he forgot to blow on it, and assumed that he burnt his tongue.

'Ow?' He waited for the pain, 'Oh, okay. The hell.'

Must have been cold tea.

'Good morning.'

He whirled.

Looking around he saw the familiar surroundings of the NERV pyramid space craft. Stars were wizzing by, and the N2 thrusters were burning beneath him like they had been the previous night, while he was doing maintenance.

'Oh my god...' He moaned, realizing he'd fallen asleep halfway through the job.

He quickly sculled the rest of the tea, gagged, threw the cup aside, and set about his job. After checking the thrusters he'd have to check that the Evas were still shrunken for the arrival on the Angels' planet, but before that, morning tea.

'Wanna cookie?'

'Sure,' he yawned, taking a couple from Asuka's open tray and shoving them through his helmet.

He sighed, today was going to be a good daad doog a eb ot gniog saw yadot.

He spoke into the audio recorder. 'The N2 engines are fluttering a little.'

Moving forward, he jammed a knob into the problem, twisting it to the optimum volume. His work done, he pushed back to the door of the space ship and opened it.

Next to be checked was the Eva.

He sighed, more work.

'Harder work.' He sighed.

Asuka put her hand on his shoulder.

'Push harder.'

'What?'

'Push harder, we almost have them.'

He opened his eyes.

'Push harder!'

'Oh man.' He coughed. He was surrounded by darkness.

The covering above him cracked, splintering light across him.

'Are they in there?'

A dog poked its head in the crack, and, yapping excitedly, it retreated.

Next came a set of hands, pulling apart the rubble and letting in more artificial sunlight.

'Ah piss,' He coughed, noting a broken leg.

'The boy's in here!'

'What about the girl?'

More splintering, more crunching, more light as the rubble was moved in greater and greater amounts.

Then it stopped.

'She's in here!'

He sat up. Looking first out around and then up. The scene was one of utter devistation; concrete lay in chunks to the north and south, a gaping hole was open up above him, and as he watched, sparks and specks of dust fell down quite daintily around him.

The ground was ravaged, no longer lush and green, but barren, wasted.

'Who did this?'

One of the workers turned to face him, and he saw it was Akagi. She walked over as Asuka was carted away, comatose.

She pulled a gun from her pocket.

'You did.'

He woke up.

'The balls was that?' He yawned.

'Yeah,' mumbled Asuka, rubbing her eyes to his left. 'Weird dream.'

He stared at her in the dim light.

'I mean-uh- shut up- idiot.'

He continued to stare, as though piercing the fabric of her soul.

'Yeah.'

'Weird.'

'What?'

'Are you sure you're a natural redhead?'

'?'

'Coz I no a guy, n lik he tots has heeps of freckels and hes redhead n u hav nun lol :P'

'Sure it's natural,' She turned away, grabbing a lock of hair to her chest.

There was silence for a few minutes.

'Where are we?'

She sighed.

'How should I know?''

'Getting back into the mean spirit of things are we?'

'Shut up.'

He shrugged, and closed his eyes.

'Carefree, like a butterfly in the wind,'

Asuka turned, staring a hole into his head as he sang.

'Carefree, like a puppy, gnawing on a bone.'

'Shut up.'

'Sorry,'

A few more minutes passed, the silence only broken by the sound of a dripping faucet, that intensified as it echoed around them where they lay.

Plonk

Plink

Plonk

Plink

Plonk.

They may as well have been dead.

* * *

'Hey, Shinji,'

His eyes opened, letting light flood into his brain. Misato waited for a response, but he didn't speak, only silently stared up at the ceiling.

'How are you?'

Still nothing.

'You were beaten up pretty bad back there.'

He rolled away, eyes narrowing.

'But you're still alive.'

Two more NERV personnel entered the room.

'God kept you alive for a reason.' She gulped, 'I'm so sorry.'

'For w-'

* * *

There was darkness.

Could he hear?

No. No sound.

Could he feel?

He was floating, couldn't touch anything. How would he know.

He sniffed.

No scents.

He screamed.

No sound.

* * *

Click.

Whirr.

Akagi sipped at her coffee. After sector 7 had been shut down so that a search for the missing pilots could begin, she'd decided it was a good time to begin her side project, which now was seeming like a worse and worse idea; already the screams had gotten to her and now she sat, noise blaring around her. Tea that she had spilled stained her napkin and her coat. It was only hours since the experiment began, but the din might have been echoing in her head for days.

She looked out the window, Eva looked back. A silent watcher.

She sighed, and checked the monitor.

Through the smoky haze of the feed she saw the helmet was still secured and working well. This she loathed.

'Eighth hour,' she reported, speaking into the audio journal, 'Still hasn't stopped.'

Click.

Whirr.

Silence.

'Huh.'

* * *

'Oh my god man! This is getting ridiculous!'

The Boy rolled over, punching the wall. They'd established by then that they were in a very small cave, which had a very small lightbulb dug into the rock, illuminating the gloom.

Still, he somehow decided it would be a good and rather spiffing idea to punch the wall.

'Ah- ow.' He grabbed his hand, 'Stupid idea.'

He heard Asuka shuffle into a different position.

'How long have we been down here?' She asked.

He rolled over.

'Couple hours?'

Asuka nodded, forehead dripping with sweet.

He exhaled, lying on his back. The ceiling was too low to stand up against, but the floor cut into his back, scratching and scraping it as he moved. They were stuck between a rock and a veritable hard place.

'It is getting hot in here.' He yawned. 'Hard to breathe as well.'

'Yup, already knew that.'

'Did you say something?'

'I said yes,'

'No, not that.'

'What then-?'

'Sh.'

Again there was silence.

'Oh. Well, my bad,'

Asuka sighed. All the lying down and doing nothing was exhausting.

'Get me out of here,'

'Fat lot of good that'll do.' He sighed, 'Face it, we're stuck.'

He sang the last bit.

* * *

_At first he couldn't believe his eyes._

_But then reality set in and he realized he had no choice in the matter. It was there, as clear as the red daylight._

_As sure as the ground's shaking, the red sea had risen up, spinning and twirling, sucking things into it that didn't belong._

_Shinji lost his balance._

_Then he lost his lunch._

* * *

'Hey,'

'What?'

'Can you stop that?'

'Stop what?'

'You know what, I can feel you rubbing my leg!'

He opened his mouth to reply. But thought better of it.

'You aren't rubbing my leg?'

'No. Not really,'

There was a silent scuffle, and a white blur sped past.

'Oh dude no, this is like my worst fear.'

'Shoo.'

'Go away.'

The blob turned to face them, two angry red dots stared out at Him and it grew closer.

'Bugger off-Ah.' he recoiled, as it latched onto his face. 'Ah get off! It's touching me!'

Asuka snorted.

'If you wanna be scared of cats that's fine. Just don't do it in front of me,'

'Cat?'

The blob detached itself, leaving a litany of scratches and cuts across his face. Satisfied with its carving, it sat down and started grooming.

'Ah,' he hissed, 'Dicking cat.'

'Well you weren't exactly the best of company,'

'Excuse me?'

'Meow.'

'That's what I thought you said.'

'Cur.' it whispered.

'Oi!'

* * *

The room was empty.

Sort of.

A silent scuffle there, a fluttering of the curtains here, a scraping sound somewhere near the bed.

It really was kind of vacant, the sort of room a person dies in

And if you didn't see the two yellow beads beneath the bed before you walked in, you were going to die in there.

At least, until it realized there was more food elsewhere, and scurried into the vents, a mere flash of light.

* * *

Asuka was halfway between confusion and hysterics; after all the boy she'd spent several uncomfortable hours with was shouting at a cat, which is a strange scenario by any standards, what was making it stranger however was that...

The cat was shouting back.

'You kicked me out a window!'

'I have no idea what the hairy arse you're going on about!'!'

'Oh yes you do, you dick!'

'Gah, poo you!'

The boy slapped the cat, and received a swipe across the face for his troubles.

'Ah cock!' He shouted, clutching at the scratch marks.

'Yeah bitch! You want some more?! Come get some.'

The cat got up on its hind legs, dancing in fisticuffs.

'My face man! Ow!'

'I will cut you.'

'You already did!'

'You slapped me like a bitch!'

'Because you are a bitch!'

The cat swiped him again. The thought occurred to Asuka that possibly this was the strangest thing she might ever see, but this quickly went away when she remembered she'd only recently served a spaceman cookies on a pyramid in deep space.

Or something like that.

'...fu-fu- ha, he, skrew you man...'

'I'll,' he yawned, 'I'll de-destroy you mang...'

The cat wobbled slightly, before collapsing onto his chest.

Asuka stared, until she realized the oxygen level was dangerously low, and fainted according to narrative device.

* * *

As far as dreams went, this one was pretty trashed up.

'Dude.' He breathed, holding onto his hair, as if it would fly away with the wind. 'The hell?'

_He had started lying down, staring up into the dawn sky. The sun was breaking over the horizon as he sat up, wind blowing water logged sand through his clothes._

_Now he stood, mesmerized by the pool of blood, writhing and bubbling, twisting upwards._

_The other one was also there, staring up, but as he watched he fell over, limp, with this a wave of nausea washed over his body, and he too collapsed._

_Onto the cold sand, still awake, he sat up again. The sun had ceased its rising in comparison to the spout of red goop spiralling up into the clouds._

_'Not yet.' He heard, a silent whisper._

_A shape formed in the funnel._

_There was a sharp crack._

_The ground fell out beneath him, and darkness descended_.

* * *

'Do you trust me?'

She looked back.

'Yes.' she said, falling back.

He moved forward to catch her, but his arms failed, and they fell further into the dark.

* * *

The breaths came heavy and fast, matching the pounding of his heart. The world beyond was dark to him.

Minutes past, minutes that felt like hours.

His eyes cracked open, fearful of what he might see.

'Oh no.'

He knew the nightmare was yet to end.

Two white eyes shone out in a pitch black room, the only other light source except for he himself.

They grew larger.

'No! Stay away.'

His heart was beating out of his chest, matching the footsteps of the eyes.

'No-' he was panicked, a bead of sweat ran through his eye, 'Go away!'

He felt a pale hand on his shoulder, and he was yanked from the nightmare.

* * *

Akagi checked the monitor again.

He'd come back.

'Oh, that's convenient.'

She sighed, watching the clock wind over into the ninth hour.

A couple of minutes passed of her spinning her pen between her fingers. She looked up at the ceiling. Nothing more was going to happen, she knew that.

'Ninth hour; third child disappeared for approx. 35 min. 4 seconds. Currently unconscious. Will pull out...'

But curiosity got the better of her.

'... And continue tomorrow,'

* * *

'...are you afraid to die?'

He looked up. But saw nothing. Nowhere that the voice could have cone from.

'Are you?'

He queried himself.

'No?'

'Then why haven't you died yet?'

There was a click, and a door opened, letting in white light. He started walking towards it, but it only moved further away.

'Well?'

He paused, putting a finger to his lips.

'Because that would be inconvenient.'

The door shot forward, the light turning red.

'Then go back.'

He stepped inside, the door closed behind him.

* * *

He stepped into darkness once more, into his trapped body.

'Ack-' he coughed, gulping for air. Claustrophobia began to set in as he realized where he was again, and he kicked out, thrashing against the confines,. 'Oh no.' he moaned, 'No.' He began pushing upwards, against the roof.

'No-'

He saw a flash. Lights began to play against the inside of his eyes.

'Am I dying?'

The lights grew brighter inside of his mind.

There was a sharp crack.

* * *

Shinji awoke.

Everything was wrong. There was too much light, too little detail, his hands felt funny, his memory was a blur.

The room was empty except for him.

'Nonono...' he whispered, clutching his head as it throbbed. 'Everything's wrong.'

He hopped out of bed and began working. Moving curtains, instruments, beds, tables, until the room was better for him. Then he did it again.

'Good.' He exclaimed, 'Better.'

The world froze for a second.

* * *

A second was all it took.

All it took for a volume the size of a foot ball pitch fifty metres deep to be blown out of the countryside was a second.

One second.

(Insert joke about number twos here.)

Several miles away Asuka coughed up a lungful of dust.

Coincidentally several miles away He also got a lungful of dust to the face.

They lay in a grassed field, surrounded by trees and sky. A small fence held off intruders as they awoke.

He looked to the east while they both stirred.

The sun was rising, or was it setting?

He couldn't tell.

Too much dust in his face.

The brightening of the scene around them would tell him.

Asuka sat up, and stared at the plume of dirt that had been thrown into the sky. Her leg twitched.

They had gone at twelve the previous day.

She checked her watch and sighed at the result.

'Seventeen hours I will never get back.'

'Bitching.'

She watched as the boy lying next to her sat up.

His clothes were ripped, hair matted and sweaty, lying in strips across his face. The watch on his wrist was smashed and he'd lost his shoes.

'Was your hair that long before?' she asked.

He stopped, and pulled at a damp lock.

'No it was not.' he concluded, before adding, 'Weird.'

'I'll say. But you know what's even weirder?'

They turned, it was Misato.

'Oh cock.'

'I'd say it's pretty weird how you two go missing for a day, and then just coincidentally a hole the size of a mammoth's gory arsehole opens up in the middle of nowhere!' she stormed across. 'And of course I get sent to investigate, and just so happen to find you two lovebirds lying in a field looking like you buggered a hedgehog on my way back! There is an Angel attack going on right now! Do you realize that? Bleck-'

She pinched the bridge of her nose, staring at the ground.

'Just get into the car,' she mumbled.

They did as she said.

The car seemed too large for its size after they got in, the boy calling shotgun seat. But after Misato slumped into her seat they remembered they had spent too long in a space not much higher than a breadstick.

The car ride back was an awkward one.

In awkward silence.

Awkwardly.

Until the Boy decided to play Hyper Music through the car stereos.

Then it got awesome.

Not really.

It was still awkward.

* * *

Gendo stood in front of the glass.

Rather silly, considering the area about two inches from his face was about to be engulfed in a ball of flame so hot it would emoliate whatever was inside.

Which was beneficial, really. Considering what you were destroying was an unreliable threat to the vast majority of civilized humanity.

With this in mind, he looked through the glass into the room beyond; it was but a silhouette on top of a silhouette in the light. A caricature of a human, forty metres tall, face grotesquely formed, shoulders hunched, bones protruding at odd angles from where they had grown. It was as far from the perfection he had perceived for it as possible

He stared into its eyes, blue, unseeing eyes.

It was a shame, but it had to be destroyed, after being stripped of its armour of course.

The committee had ordered it.

He put up his hand to the glass and watched in silence as it was devoured by the fire.

The alarm went off.

He paid no notice, watching with cold eyes for the next half hour until the fires stopped and receeded.

He put his face up to the glass once more, trying to see through the haze.

Finally the smoke faded.

'Well then, maybe next time...'

The creature was hunched over, skin charred, eyes burnt.

As he watched it shook itself, giving off a low moan. Grilled meat fell off in chunks until naught was left but pale white skin.

It rolled its head, pushing out the crispy blue orbs, pushing in a pair of red cat eyes.

The two met each other's gaze.

With a hint of sorrow, the Eva moaned one last time, before sacrificing its consciousness.

'...old friend.'

**End**

'You're still fat.' She whispered, peering over the front seat.

'Well your legs fell off.'

She looked down.

'They're still there.'

'The top half of your shirt isn't.'

Once again, she looked down

'Well fock me softly and call me Sally.'

'I already did that to your mother last night.'

He crossed his arms. The car got real silent.

'Nice try kiddo.'

'What?'

'My parents are away on business so...' she turned in her seat, 'In yo face.'

'Nahp.' he leaned forwards.

'My dick is just that long.'


	12. Chapter 12

_She felt like she could fly, even without wings._

_She looked out, no longer able to feel her own heartbeat. The ground was white below her, save for the black blob she aimed for. Unblinking, she closed her eyes._

_She jumped._

* * *

The blast knocked her to the ground, sending shards of white concrete ripping through the city. She tried getting up, frantically pushing against the ground, feeling the bones in her arms break with the strain.

But she had no legs to stand on.

Unit two looked up, falling back down onto its back as it did so.

She saw it once more. A pale monstrosity, tall, ungainly. With arms that touched the floor and bent twice in the middle. It hunched over, always on its toes, always supporting itself with massive barbed fingers.

She saw it, bigger than before and it kept growing, eating and devouring everything.

It reached down towards her, its jaw hanging halfway down its chest, two spits of yellow light forced forth from the eye sockets.

'Shut down Eva.' she whispered, before the Angel could deliver the final blow.

The cockpit went silent.

Asuka brushed her hair out of her face, banging the armrest as she did so.

'Shit.'

She lent back, bracing against the physical blow, but in the end the only thing she noticed was the sound; the cracking and rending of bone and steel.

'The head.' She mumbled, it was more embarrassing than anything else.

There was another crunch. Closer.

Her ears pricked up.

Another.

Asuka could hear groaning steel, she saw the cracks forming around the plug.

The plug went dark.

'...are you afraid to die?'

'What?'

* * *

'Well boyo.' She sighed, 'This is it.'

The boy looked past Akagi, and upwards to the creature trapped within the scaffolding. He raised an eyebrow in surprise, it was a far fetch from the machine that had gone apeshit the previous week and tried to kill everyone. That was a monster, thick, bulky, gargantuan, incredibly top heavy.

This one might almost have been a person.

It had been stripped down to the bare essentials, and rekitted in less than an hour, but as a result the armour was light, almost duct taped on, with unsightly spaces between the pieces.

'Tits...' he whispered, under his breath. 'What happened to it?'

'A whole bunch of stuff,' blurted the good doctor, hurrying him along, 'Now will you please get in?'

He thought it over, all the while the good doctor continued pushing his back harder and harder.

'Fine.'

'Good,'

Without another word Akagi shoved a parcel into his hands and then shoved him into a waiting elevator.

He was rather miffed about it all.

* * *

_'Well are you?'_

_The blackness ascended, and she could see the Outside scene in its completeness._

_Her unit lay below, mangled, crushed. The area below the hips was a bloody mess, and above the shoulders it wasn't much better._

_The scene perplexed her more than anything._

'I don't know...'_ she whispered._

_The scene grew larger._

_'Then go back.'_

* * *

The angel was growing, growing larger as it ate the city, tearing apart the buildings and shoving dirt indiscriminately down its throat. It made Him recoil.

He leant forward in the plug, (Which he noticed had 1 stenciled on the outside, very unprofessional) 'What the garbage?'

It turned, jaw swinging wildly.

The screen lit up, flashing warnings in almost illegible characters, highlighting the Angel in various shades of technicolour.

'That's new-'

He wasn't on his toes however, and received a fist to the gut for his troubles. Reeling, they dodged a wild swing and moved over to Asuka, pulling the crushed plug from the wreckage.

A flash of red hair shone through the mess.

'Dicking.' he exclaimed, moving to the extraction point. The Angel only drew closer as the bolts fastened. He found it hard to keep his cool until the engines finally fired, sending him below ground.

The sky soon disappeared above the concrete. His mission was done.

He exhaled.

'Oh jebus.'

'Boy.'

The display flickered on. It was Akagi.

'Ge-'

Static.

'H-?'

He could only hug the plug to his chest while the outside air exploded, showering heat and molten metal across a very fragile AT field.

A pain exploded in his chest, a searing, burning pain.

* * *

The scene was dramatic, as one by one, pipe lines to the geofront erupted with burning air and molten earth. Massive bursts of the stuff flooded the ground, charring and ruining the soil.

For a minute the scene would blind a man for two, until the flow stopped, and the metal flowed into the water.

The only risk now would be being boiled in what was now a massive pressure cooker.

They fell through the roof, bringing down lighting and massive shards of concrete.

As he spun in the air, He briefly pondered what it had been that brought him to that place, and that time, just so he could be subject to the pain.

He pondered the fate of Asuka. The plug seal had been blasted shut by the explosion, but now it had passed, and steam was being thrown into the air at random intervals, if the seal was only a crack open, she'd be cooked.

He coughed. Nobody he'd known had ever died before, and now he was filled with a feeling.

It made him dread seeing anyone but himself.

'That's...' he thought it over, 'That's pretty shit.'

The ground rushed up to meet him.

* * *

'Whaddup?'

Gendo walked into the room, twirling his cane. His suit had a single delicately placed crinkle in it, like a violin with a purposeful imperfection.

Akagi looked over her shoulder. 'We had to detonate an N2 mine within the geofront, sir.'

He paused for thought, the entire room went silent.

'How far inside.'

'Eva launch tunnel 7.'

'So will we relocate to 53?'

She nodded.

'That's cool,'

He left.

Nobody spoke until the doors shut behind him.

'Fucking lady's man, that guy.' Someone murmured.

'Oi,' came a reply, 'He's married,'

* * *

**Great Unexpectations**

* * *

'How's she looking?'

Maya turned around.

'Pretty much unscathed actually,'

'?'

'Yeah, she lost a bit of skin off her knees, but that's about it.'

Akagi's eyebrows hit the roof. 'I find that hard to believe.'

'So do I.'

Akagi leant back in her seat, feeling the budget joints creak beneath her.

'Can I ask how?'

The question was left unanswered, as Misato stepped into the room, shutting the door behind her. Her jacket was hanging half off, hat crooked, and hair a general mess.

'I thought Kaji didn't arrive til tomorrow.'

Maya stifled a laugh.

The captain's eyes narrowed.

'I will break you.' she mouthed.

Of course no one really understood what she had mouthed, and a very varied list of responses followed.

'Sure. If you have weed,'

'That sounds painful,'

'Pigs swill bacon?'

'Poppers pill taking?'

Misato paused, 'How many people are there in the room?'

She certainly couldn't see any others.

'Humans, three.'

'People.'

'Who knows how many?'

'That's creepy.'

Silence.

Misato cleared her throat, suddenly a lot more self conscious, 'Anyways... I'm here to pick up Asuka.'

'Sure,' Akagi motioned past herself, 'Third door on the left.'

'And-'

'Third door on the right.

'And where can I pick up Shinji?'

'You'll know when we're done with him.'

She nodded.

'Third door, on the left.'

* * *

Asuka was sitting up in bed when Misato walked in, clutching her knees to her chest. It appeared as if everything was normal, if a little cold.

Then she opened her mouth.

'I'm useless.'

Misato raised an eyebrow, this was not like her.

'Come on now,'

'Every single time...' She choked out.

'Well,' she put her hand on her chin, 'To be honest, you're a little socially awkward, pretty brash... Find it a little hard to make friends...'

Asuka looked up.

'It's in your file.'

She looked back down.

'But that's not the point,'

'Then what is the point?'

'You're far from useless.'

Asuka's eyes widened, it was happening again; images of a bathtub flashed past. A bird a thousand miles across, mental torture, words, a hooded man, and...

'Can I call my parents?'

Misato flipped out her cell phone.

'Sure.'

* * *

He looked at the wall, in a tired haze, he stared at the point where he thought a window would go if they weren't eight hundred metres below the ground. He imagined the geofront in the mental frame, molten metal and concrete rolling over each other into the lakes and rivers, the massive jets of white energy falling into the ground.

Terror seized him as the imagination morphed into a dream and he found himself falling again. The ground grew closer and closer, a twisted hell of the reality.

He shuddered, waking from the micro nap.

Misato stood at the door.

'Get up,'

He tossed aside the bed covers.

'But whyyyy?'

Misato sighed.

'You need a haircut, I need a beer, and Asuka needs better reception.'

He stared daggers at her.

'And ice cream.'

'And ice cream, now come along.'

He turned back over, watching the wall.

'Maybe tomorrow.'

'Get your fat face out of bed right now, or I will make your life hell.'

'Well when you put it that way...'

His slippers padded softly as he walked, kitted out in a naked suit, towards Misato.

'Come on, we'll stop by the clothes store on the way. Asuka's waiting in the car.'

He paused.

'What's wrong with my clothes?'

'You've worn the same shirt for three weeks. I would say more but then I'd gag.'

'Yeah you would.'

She shot daggers.

* * *

The city gleaned in the mist as hundreds of vents worked to get rid of the steam trapped below, birds fluttered overhead, leaving a trail of droppings across the buildings as they flew.

Birds are generally regarded as the most douchey of animals, just ask any cat.

Tokyo-3 had returned to normal, it would seem, as the sun rose on the horizon. People resumed their normal activities, as thought the previous day's events had already been forgotten.

The same went for underground; though the physical signs were still there, work had already begun on moving materials from the ground back to the ceiling, and moving condensation from the ceiling to the water, efforts were being made to restore the soil as buffalo ploughed fields.

'They look like little ants, don't they?'

'Hm?' He looked over, down across the landscape. 'Indeed.'

'Oh, katsuragi.' Asuka reached beneath the seat. 'I found your phone.'

She handed it across the dashboard.

'That's because I gave it to you.'

'You did?'

She raised an eyebrow. Misato turned around to look at him, asking with her eyes.

'Don't look at me.' He started, 'I don't know nuffin.'

* * *

The room was alive.

He knew it. It's eyes were constantly staring at him, mouths always closed until he turned around.

As if to prove himself, he turned away.

'Oh man, he took ages that time.' The wardrobe whispered.

'Yeah man,' replied the floor. 'At least he didn't leave a damp mat on me that time.'

'Jesus Christ dude, it's not always about you.' grunted the window, 'Just look at the door, the man has had more women walk right through him than a weight watchers seminar.'

The door stifled a whimper.

Shinji turned back around.

The wardrobe froze, halfway through forming a sentence.

'Ah sh-' it began, 'fuck.'

He walked over.

'Hey,' he tapped its face. 'Can you move over there,'

He pointed, and backed away, hopping back into bed with a grunt, both from him and the bed.

'Okay.'

He rolled over.

There was a clattering and a scraping, followed by moans and laughter.

'Get off his nut man.' chuckled the table.

'I was freaked out okay, stop picking on me.'

'Ooooh.'

* * *

The boy fell through the door, carrying his new wardrobe. And some clothes as well.

The small apartment was poorly lit, as usual, and did nothing to show the suspicious black lump in the middle of the floor, or even the far wall, for that matter.

He mumbled a greeting to Kaji, stumbling around the lounge before tripping over HR lump, and crashing into his little hidy-hole of a room. Much grunting ensued, until a bang ended it all. Eventually He emerged, looking shaken, disheveled. He flicked on the lights, and the room was flooded with light, he took this time to orient himself. The tv was to the left, couches about four feet in front, counter was to the right along with Kaji. The lump was right in front of him.

He kicked it.

Pen pen got up, squeaked a penguin curse at him, and left.

He grabbed a beer and fell onto the couch.

He paused.

'Wait a sec,' he looked over at Kaji.

'I'm too young to responsibly enjoy this refreshing beverage.'

He got back up, switching it for some milk drink that had suspicious lumps in it, supposedly by design.

Once again he paused.

'Wait.' He looked at Kaji.

'This stuff tastes terrible.'

He walked back to the fridge, placing down the disgusting brew and picking up a grape soda.

However, halfway to the couch he paused once more.

'Wait.' He looked at his skin, then at the grape soda.

The world froze.

'Who the balls are you?'

Kaji sighed, leaning against the wall.

'Haven't you been reading?'

'What?'

'I'm Kaji.' He lifted his beer, 'A rugged man, with many sides. Just like this hard yet delicate brew, made from the finest hops and fermented to get the most kick from the cornfield. Do you love mountain? Mountain love you. This beer is carted far and wide by hand to ensure no flavor gets lost in transit, it takes two years to move a batch to the top of a mountain, where it is then carried by alpine gorillas to the store. And to you.'

'Drink responsibly.'

Misato kicked in the door, followed closely by Asuka.

Both were carrying little more than ice cream.

'I swear to god...' he pinched his nose. 'I just carried a mahogany _brick_ up three flights of stairs! And you _chicks_ wanna come rock up like "Hey let's carry nothing but ice cream. He doesn't need any help."'

Kaji spluttered, spraying pisswater across the carpet.

'Holy fuck that's bad.' he coughed, about to keel over. Finally, after much ado he did fall over, coughing and choking. Before finally spitting up the beer back into the can.

'Honestly.' he moaned, 'How the fuck do you drink this?'

'You don't.'

Kaji got back up, albeit uneasily and unsteady.

'Tastes like banana piss.'

* * *

The night passed quickly, too quickly for some, not quickly enough for others. Either way, eventually Katsuragi found herself sitting down with the good doctor for a talk over a pretty average lunch.

'You coming tonight?'

'Sure,' Akagi tossed aside a sheet of paper.

'So...' Katsuragi started, stirring her coffee and looking around the cafeteria. 'How're your cats?'

Akagi looked up, halfway through her accounting and a bowl of water soup.

'Good.' she mumbled through a mouthful of bread, 'How're yours?'

'The homestay's doing well. Asuka's...' she paused, trying to find a word, 'Different.'

Akagi put down her pen and took off her glasses, then began wiping them with her coat.

'How so?'

Misato continued to stir her coffee.

'She's been a bit strange,'

Doc sighed, sitting back.

'How so?' she urged.

'Her self esteem was in the dumps yesterday, she asked to call her parents so I gave her my phone, then I go pick up _him_ five minutes later and she doesn't remember anything when I get back.'

'Contamination?'

'I hope not.'

'Don't we all.' Ritsuko replied, pushing the soup away. The conversation over, she continued her accounts.

Misato sighed. After sculling her beer she left.

* * *

The chips were in, the cards counted. The green felt was his friend this night, the smoke was his shield. The dim lights around him hid his blatant lack of age.

He was playing his parents.

And he was winning.

In the downtown area of Tokyo-3 a sign might flicker on, lighting the street and the hobos an eerie red. This was where he was tonight, playing and destroying in the NERV poker night.

The woman to his left played first.

Full house.

The crowd ahd.

Gendo placed his cards down, wearily watching the coated stranger just across from him.

A four of a kind.

The crowd around them oohed, Gendo leaned forward, pulling a Gendo.

The woman to his left cursed, drawing laughter from the other staff, it wasn't often the CO's wife got beaten.

Shinji looked at his cards.

He took his time placing them down.

Royal flush.

The crowd generally cheered, but some were left at the back asking each other what happened, generally with the same response.

'I dunno,'

'So,' he mumbled, badly disguising his voice, 'I won?'

'Yes.' Gendo mumbled, pushing over the chips. 'Cash in and get out.'

He got up, after moving the chips into a suitcase, and walked over to the counter.

On the way his mother caught him by the arm.

Gendo watched as his wife whispered into the strangers ear, handing him a package. After she sat down, Gendo queried her.

'That was Shinji, dear,' she replied.

'Ah,' he Gendoed, 'Sneaky little blighter. So did he say where he's been?'

Yui shrugged.

'No idea. He looks well enough.'

'We should probably stay out of his business then.'

'Yup.'

They exchanged glances for a few minutes, sipping glasses of whiskey and checking their losses. Smaller games of poker went on around them as each staff member fought for a better, newer seat.

'I'll call the PI when we get back.'

'Thank you honey.'

* * *

'Yo,'

Cut across town to the suspiciously vacant Katsuragi residence. The two pilots had been left alone once more in the small lot, with nay but instant ramen and water to get through the night.

The current man of the house had been eyeing up the penguin for about an hour, wondering wether sauteed meat would taste good with instant ramen. After stopping himself from grabbing Shinji's meat cleaver for the third time he knew he had to tear himself away.

So now he found himself in the doorway of Shinji's Asuka's Love Nest, casting a long shadow into the poorly lit room and onto the walls of boxes.

'Whaddup?' Came the reply.

He gulped, swallowing nervousness.

'Do you...'

He choked out.

'Do I...?'

'Do you have any food?'

'No, get out.'

He walked away.

'Balls.' He mumbled, reaching for the cleaver and ramen.

* * *

Misato was all concentration, poker face badly propped up by a mental effort great enough to exhaust anyone. Ritsuko and Kaji looked across at her, their faces straight with seemingly no effort.

She caught their eye contact.

_Every year._

She had already decided, she was going to get that chair.

* * *

Pen Pen was asleep by the TV.

It would only take a second.

However, putting safety first, he walked to the bathroom sink and began washing his hands, slowly and delicately sudding and rubbing. Then rinse and repeat. This done, He dried his hands and put on gloves, before walking back out of the bathroom and to the kitchen.

Each step from then was a deliberate one, washing one of many dirty pans, turning on stove, placing pan on stove, placing oil on pan, preparing the cutting board, boiling the water, pouring the water over the Ramen.

He stood up, checking the temperature of the pan. Finally satisfied, he turned around.

'So sorry to do this old boy, but I'm not eating that without real meat.'

Pen Pen looked up, fresh from its nap, before he seized it by the throat. It froze in his hands

He walked back over and plonked it down on the cutting board, lifting the cleaver.

'One, two,' He took a breath, this was only his second kill, 'Three-'

There was a knock at the door.

'Ah cock.' He cursed, throwing aside his gloves. 'Coming!'

Pen^2 opened an eye and breathed a sigh of relief.

It sat up, squawking.

The door flew open before him, revealing

'Pizza?'

'I have two meatlovers and a chicken-feta-and-honey-mustard pizza.

'Uh...' He checked his pockets, 'Uh-'

'Those are mine.'

Asuka was standing against her doorway, holding out exact change for it.

He grabbed it, and handed it to the delivery boy, who in turn handed over the pizza.

Such is life in capitalist society.

The door slammed close, squashing an unfortunate fly, one with a wife and kids. Kids who need a dad, sons who depend on him for a strong role model, and daughters who rely on him to get emotional angst out.

'Mummy,' they'd pine, 'Where's daddy?'

'I don't know...' she'd worry, crying over the next few days and praying for her husband's safe return.

They'd wait for days, the mother trying to keep the nest together until one by one the kids left and mummy fly was left alone in an empty house.

She would die, leaving behind no legacy but her kids and a broken home.

And He would still be eating pizza, having a merry chat with Asuka about nothing in general.

'So do you go to school?' he asked, lying back on his bean bag, the TV was going to his left, Asuka sat in front of him, forming an isosceles.

She stopped, halfway through shoving a slice of pizza down her gob.

'I'm not sure.' She mumbled. 'It really dependzh on where the plot is goin', you know?'

'Yeah,' he replied, one upping her by shoving two into his gullet. 'It'sh like that sometimes.'

'It'sh like our life izh a book sometimesh,' she choked through three slices of pizza. 'Like we're in a zhtory where the author doesn't-' she swallowed, 'Doesn't have a plan.'

'Rrrry?'

He had four slices in his mouth.

'Yes.'

'Ths cll.'

He gulped. Surprisingly it all went down

'This is good stuff.' He lifted a slice of pizza up, examining it closely. 'Where's it from?'

'I dunno.'

'Interesting.'

* * *

She could see herself sitting in it, finally, a new chair for her desk. At last, no more bruised arse cheeks, no more butthurt, but first she had to beat every person in the room.

Easier said than done.

Finally, Akagi opened her mouth.

'All in.'

Misato fluttered briefly.

Kaji sighed, pushing in his chips, Katsuragi did the same.

She looked at her cards.

* * *

'So how'd it feel?'

He looked up at her, one eyebrow raised.

'You know, getting nuked.'

'Oh!' He leant forward, laughing, 'Man, it felt like...'

He paused.

'It felt like...'

'Go on,'

'Well there was a massive pain, all across my chest,' he motioned, 'And the rest of my body felt like it was being put through a crematorium. Huge burning. Definitely not something I'd like to repeat.'

'Didn't your Eva turn off.'

'I would have, but then you probably would have been deep fried and charred. Like this pizza right here,'

He chomped down onto the meatlovers.

'Good stuff,' he repeated.

'Ew,'

A few minutes passed while the two of them sat like sloths in front of the TV, each one stuffing themselves. Gradually the pizza disappeared, until finally it had vanished into somewhat thin air..

'Well,' He fell backwards off his beanbag, patting his belly, which had gradually trimmed down to pre-doritogate level with the doctor's order. 'I'm full.'

'Same.'

The TV flashed with colours, bright sparks and flashes of pastel, all of it conglomerating into one of the most confusing tv shows ever.

Asuka shuffled in closer. But His mind was preoccupied.

_Did they just turn into orange juice_?

She was encroaching upon his beanbag.

'I'm cold,' she mumbled.

'Get a jacket then mate,'

'Uh- yes... right.'

She got up.

He shrugged as she walked off.

* * *

'Maybe next year, eh doctor.'

Misato stood up, her chip tally was the highest in the room, now she had the pleasure of waiting until the rare points where her job required her to sit.

But she'd won, so it was cool.

'See you tomorrow.'

'Bye!' she waved, walking out the door.

It had been a good day.

* * *

Asuka looked back across at him from her room, he was still just sitting there, an expression on his face that read either stoned or perplexed.

'This is too much,' He stated, getting up. 'I'm going to bed,'

The lights dimmed, almost off, as he walked out.

Asuka turned back, unsure of what she'd seen.

'That's not normal...'

* * *

Shinji sat atop the hill. His feet dangling over the edge. The drop below was vertigo inducing, even in the dim light, it made him feel sick.

'Hey!'

He turned towards the voice, and lost his perch. What followed was a stumble, a trip as he slipped over, grabbing the cliff only by one hand.

Shinji exhaled, the person who called him was nowhere.

'This is all wrong,' he moaned, closing his eyes.

'Are you afraid to die?'

He could feel something looking over his shoulder, something that was wrong, something that shouldn't exist. He swallowed, trying to ignore the unnaturalness of the thing as he former his sentence

'Yes,' he replied.

'Then go on.'

Suddenly his hand tired, fatiguing unnaturally, for a while he held on, trying to keep a grip. But Gravity won.

The ground rushed up to meet him, and on the way down he briefly reflected on his life, briefly.

_NO_

Very briefly.

_NO_

His body would be found by the next morning.

_NOSTOPNONONO_

* * *

**End**

* * *

_He awoke in an open coffin. Or was it a bed? He couldn't tell._

_The house was as normal, as it should have been. So why did he feel so weird?_

_Why did the room around him shift away when he touched it? Why did nothing come into focus?_

_But then it passed, and memories came flooding back._

* * *

_**'Am I dead?'**_


	13. Chapter 13

_**Shinji got up and walked around,**__ there was no noise, only the faded grey image of his steps, the silent drifting of the curtains. The walls seemed to be made of smoke as he wafted past, all of them wavering and flickering as though given off by some unseen fire. He felt surreal._

_'Is this heaven?'_

_It might have just as well been heaven, but the only view he had suggested it was of a more purgatory nature. The vagueness of the world only continued as he stepped out the door, walking into sunlight that turned the grey smoke white. There were no birds singing, no crickets rattling, no leaves rustling. There was no sound but his breath and his heartbeat, ironic, considering his relative deadly disposition._

_'Hello?' He called, but received only an echo in reply._

_'Great,' he mumbled, collapsing onto the pavement._

Alone, again.

* * *

'Mornang errybody!'

Misato stirred, kicking apart the sheets. Her dream had been destroyed halfway through the good bit, and now, disheartened, she began to get up. Her watch had been smashed earlier by her car, so she was running on assumed time.

She assumed it to be too early.

'Coming!' she heard, coming from Asuka's room, in Asuka's voice, so she took a wild guess that it was Asuka.

'I swear to god,' she muttered, 'Everybody's a morning person but me in this goddam family.'

_Family?_

'I'm sure Shinji hates mornings as well,' she mumbled, pulling on her work clothes. If anything it was a small comfort.

When she arrived at breakfast the other two had already begun their chow, and Kaji was standing in the doorway.

It was a Saturday morning.

'Is it 7 already?' She yawned, rubbing her eyes.

'No,'

'Oh?'

'It's 10, we thought you needed the sleep in,'

'Never needed it before.'

'You will, trust me,' he offered a timid smile, 'step outside please.'

'Sure.'

* * *

**Flat**

* * *

He sipped it.

'This tastes like corn.'

'What?'

He lifted the purple bottle up. All across it was Chinese writing, a picture of cucumber, and two weird looking berries. Inside sloshed a yellow liquid, not unlike the color of a Heineken, .

'This,' he swirled the bottle, 'Tastes like corn.'

'Like, is it bad?' Asuka was perplexed.

'No, I like corn, but.' He crossed his arms, she did the same.

'But?'

'I don't usually drink corn, and nowhere on this bottle is there a picture of corn.'

'Do you like it then?'

'Well it-' he stopped, 'It tastes like corn dude!' He spluttered, exasperated.

She leant back.

'So what?'

'Like...' he paused, lifting an eyebrow, looking up at the ceiling for inspiration. After about twenty seconds internalizing he stopped, and looked her in the eye, 'Here,' he handed over the bottle, 'try some.

Asuka took it. It felt abnormally heavy in her hands.

'Go on, drink some.'

She put it up to her lips, normally a sin in his books, but he hardly intended to drink more. After a couple sips she plonked it down.

'This tastes like corn!'

'I know right!'

Her lips were wiped on her sleeve.

'Why does it taste like corn?!'

He threw his hands up in the air.

'No idea.'

He put his hands back on the table. Clutching the place mat beneath them he sighed.

'It's good.'

'What is?'

'It's good having a good friend.'

Asuka looked down.

'Yup.'

* * *

'He's dead?' She braced her back against the wall. 'How can you be sure?'

Kaji sighed, scratching the back of his head, behind him a tabby slinked across the rails, playing foreground to a city being rebuilt.

'The usual,' He replied, 'More blood around than inside his body... Et cetera.'

Misato gulped back a tear, no crying, instead she stood up straighter than before.

'Then I suppose I should be going to work then.' she stated, walking past Kaji and into the lift. The doors shut behind her with a sigh, and Kaji was left dumbfounded.

'Oh no...' he whispered, and began to run towards the elevators, 'Hey.'

Misato was halfway to her car when she heard him, loud and clear.

'Don't do anything stupid!"

She got into her car, and keyed the ignition.

_It's my fault_.

Kaji stopped, it was too late. She was off.

'Ah cock,'

* * *

Asuka woke up.

She must have slept, she didn't remember it thought, but she must have; the narrative even said so.

She awoke to an empty house, still sitting where she was when she ate breakfast. But without her dish, and the room was clean, OMG. She yawned, noting only an hour had passed, and that the sun had barely moved from its earlier position.

The window was open, curtains billowing in the summer breeze.

'Hello?'

No reply.

While she looked a note caught her attention, written in scrawl and barely legible. She picked it up.

_I'm out, apparently I have a piano recital. Do I even play Piano? Regardless I have to play at town hall in about say, two hours, and it'll take an hour to get there. So I'm leaving, sorry for not waking you._

The last part made her chuckle, a sad chuckle, but a chuckle nonetheless.

_You looked dead, srs, I mean, you were just completely still._

_Also you fell asleep while I was talking _to_ at you about the concept of time and space and how everything is really just a human construct._

* * *

_Dude, I am not gonna be able to do this._

Another hour had passed within the hall, as more and more people shuffled in, all the while He was trying to injure himself so that he couldn't play. This was the third time he had slammed his wrist in the stall's door, and it had yet to break.

'C'mon!' he muttered, 'C'mon.'

He was dressed as nicely as he could think to be, long pants, long shirt, waistcoat, smart shoes.

In other terms, black chinos, red dress shirt, Vans, and a waistcoat.

He didn't think it was enough. Either way he was still trying with a fury to stop himself playing, and praying all that time that the hall would stop filling up.

'Please god, do me a favour here.'

There was a knock on the door. A very rigid, regal one.

'Five minutes, sir.' he heard.

He straightened up, the wrist wasn't going to break.

_I'll just tell them I can't play, and they'll call it off. Yeah. _

He spiked his hair, elegantly dishevelling it in his distinctive style, so he thought, tucked in, and brushed the dust off his waistcoat. This left him almost presentable.

_That's what'll happen._

It's not what happened.

* * *

'Dude! I can't play piano.'

The valet smirked.

'Oh no sir, you can, I've heard you.'

'Wha...?-' he spluttered, mouth agape.

Akagi poked her head around the corner.

'Why do you think you were chosen to pilot Eva? You're certainly not fit.' She nodded at the valet, he left without another word. 'All in the hands remember?'

He stared, agape.

'No...'

'Well you're on, Asuka even showed up.'

'Ah...'

'?'

'Ballsack.'

The curtain beckoned, Akagi kicked him through it.

'Break a leg boyo!'

The lights were blinding, searing his retinas until his pupils constricted, leaving him wishing that they hadn't.

Right, back stage, middle, piano, left...

_So many people. Oh man. Oh man._

He walked over and sat down at the piano, his vision blurred with red and black on either side.

_Quasi yadayadayadaya ... What the-_

The crowd silently went silent, in silence. From the corner of his eye he saw Asuka sitting, rather bored looking, in the second row, part of the red of the blur, and his heart leaped into his throat.

_Ship's gotta go down, I guess. Might as well start._

* * *

Asuka had to admit that she didn't expect much, after all, from her recent experiences with him she could only deduce that he was a mere fuckup, somewhat deprived of natural talent.

It all made it even more interesting and confusing to her that sh-

The first hammer hit the strings, sounding around the theatre and through her bones, followed by a second, surprisingly in time, then a third, a fourth, like a rain of fire the notes came tumbling down and down.

And then it stopped.

And restarted, like a fire, growing higher and higher only to be extinguished to a low burn once more.

This went on for seemingly hours, until finally it ceased, and left were two children, both shocked, staring at each other through the milky air.

He turned his gaze from Asuka down to his hands, turning them over while the crowd applauded. Nervously, he looked back up, gulping.

'Uh, yes.' He coughed, 'Mhm- uh... Thank you.'

And with that, he left.

* * *

Tarmac is a terribly peaceful creature, compared to anything else it might almost seem dead, possibly just a mixture of tar and bits, but no, in reality it is just very, very lazy; so put away those preposterous notions you have that the roads you drive on can't feel you.

Tires, on the other hand, are completely dead. Don't be so silly, everyone knows a tire is dead.

Such is the scene as tires rolled along tarmac, creating little farts of heat and sound as they did so. This physically founded flatulence soon dissipated to the edge of the atmosphere, chasing after dreams of reconversion back into a useful form of energy.

Meanwhile Misato continued to drive, depressing ever so delicately the accelerator so that she might stay at whatever arbitrary speed she'd chosen.

Around 137 kph, which is a bit fast, and considering she'd been driving for two hours, she'd theoretically have covered 274 thousand metres, around 913 thousand feet, however many miles from Tokyo-3 and her two charges.

And she had no idea where she was going.

'I have no idea where I'm going.' she sighed, realizing with heavy heart the futility of her actions.

As more and more trees sped past, she reached an ultimatum within her mind.

_I should probably pull over. Either that or I keep going, and eventually this thing crashes._

She chose the first.

She got the second.

* * *

'I can't get it right.'

'Whaddya mean?'

'Like I have no idea who I am,' He placed a pensive hand on his chin, 'I didn't want to play. I couldn't. How does something like that happen?'

The curtains billowed out again, reacting to the hot summer day's air. At that moment a bird flew through the window, landing on the table with a thud and a squawk. For a few seconds all attention was on the poor creature, as it hopped around, staring at the two humans with wide, beady eyes.

'Cheep cheep mothafucka.' it whispered, before fluttering back the way it came.

They took a few seconds, before He cleared his throat, rather suggestively.

'I dunno,' she continued, and chewed her hair.

'And then the whole thing with Akagi.' He sipped some tea, hoping it'd help his aching throat. 'Telling me that's why I was chosen.'

'Well,' she shrugged, 'You're here anyway,'

'Yup.'

'And once again we're left abandoned at home.'

He smirked.

'It's only three dewd. Katserface normally gets home at like eleven... I really need to stop saying that.'

'Saying what?'

'Like. The word like. I've just been saying it more often recently. You know.'

'Sure.'

'It's really annoying me.'

'Yup.'

'Cool.'

A couple of minutes may have passed, or they may not have passed, depending on wether or not you're a fan of soccer. Either way, it was slightly more silent in that room filled with white noise.

'I'm just thinking.'

The static of beanbag chairs filed the air.

'Watcha thinking about?'

'Stuff.'

'What kind of stuff?'

'Listen...'

'Listening.'

* * *

The office was a quiet one on this day, only Akagi had stayed to keep working on her findings, while the others had gone home to their lives before midday.

The good doctor had no life. They were stupid.

It was half three when she heard the doors slide open, and the tell tale clicking of a cane on concrete came strolling into the room.

'Good evening.' she also heard, but preferring to ignore it she continued working on the test results.

'Doctor Akagi, in the situation which you find yourself I would find it very unwise to continue ignoring me.'

This piqued her interest, she turned.

Gendo looked particularly haggard this evening, what with the lines on his face slowly getting deeper and darker, and the rings around his eyes growing larger.

'And what would that be?'

'You, doctor, conducted an unauthorized experiment for the duration of one and a half weeks, during this experiment a male subject, my _son_, doctor, underwent severe mental trauma which lead to his death, late last night. So tell me,' he leant on his cane, 'Why? What was the purpose of the experiment? To make the ultimate poker player?'

Akagi took off her glasses, and began to clean them with her jacket, a nervous habit.

'Do you really want to know?'

'Just tell me.'

She put her glasses down with a thud.

'We were testing sensory deprivation as a way to induce hallucinations and eventually mental simulation of combat situations.'

'And what really happened?'

She shrugged.

'Who is John Galt?'

'My son is dead, irretreivable, gone on, moved away, we can't get him back now. You've put the entire operation in jeopardy.'

'Indeed.'

'That is all.'

* * *

'Hold me?'

He stared at her, confused.

'Why?'

'You,' she put her head in her hands, 'are just so obtuse.'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'It means,' she gripped his wrist.

_Ouch._

'You annoy the piss out of me.'

He looked her in the eyes, slowly removing himself from her grip. There was something there, something he'd seen in the mirror earlier, it wasn't desire, the desire was obvious, it was something else. Something cold.

'Did you get enough sleep last night?'

The desire drained away, leaving confusion, regret.

'Oh man, what did I just do...' She slumped back, cross legged. 'I'm sorry.'

He shrugged.

'Don't worry, happens all the time,'

_That's a lie._

'What?'

When she turned her head back up he was standing, looking down at her, preparing to leave the room. Slowly, he leant down and brushed hair out of her face, then without another word, he left.

Presumably to grab the phone as it rang.

The kitchen seemed too quiet as he walked in, Pen Pen was no doubt penguin drunk inside his steel box and Misato was still absent. The chirping of the cicadas and the windless day did nothing to lift the deserted appearance of the room, instead they added another chilling layer to the already eerie feeling creeping up His spine. He straightened up as he passed by the table.

_This is creepy._

However as soon as the phone was planted firmly against his ear the silence lifted, and he was subject to a worse reality.

'Hi-'

'Angel attack. You, Asuka, HQ, now.'

The words came fast and stilted, interrupted by shouts and sharp breaths, until finally dial tone rang again and the conversation was over, a pop in the pimple of the room's illusion of silence.

'Asuka!' he yelled.

'What?' came the reply, as she sleepily stumbled into the room.

A black leg planted itself in the street outside, crushing cars and poor old tarmac alike. Road splintered and threw shards into the air, like a wooden 2x4 under the foot of an elephant on steroids who had just eaten a thickburger the size of a bus.

They both stopped and stared at it, waiting until what they assumed to be the Angel to pass, and then for the shock to pass.

And then for an adequate amount of seconds to pass.

And then he turned, and waited for his lips to work again.

And then for his vocal chords to work.

'Yeah that?'

'We should go.'

As he rushed out the door, struggling on Asuka's proverbial coat tails, he thought he saw a small knit crawl out of his chino legs and onto the floor, screaming and shouting innumerable and inaudible curses at him.

It would appear that TsaTsa had survived.

Not for long as a certain penguin waddled out into the room, wondering about the noises he'd heard, but soon that was forgotten when a small treat slid down his throat.

It was the end of TsaTsa...

?

* * *

The street was littered with wreckage, making the boiling black surface that much harder to navigate as the two pilots desperately tried to reach the nearest entrance tunnel, scrambling over cracks and crushed cars as they did so. A couple of times in the journey he looked up, staring after the Angel as the weird looking thing strompled through the city, making a painful mess of it with each awkward, lumbering step. He didn't see Asuka look, but she must have at some point, he'd heard her gasp at its size, a size one might forget after piloting an Eva.

'Jebus.' he panted, finally reaching the door to the tunnel, one which Asuka had already opened, and left open. She now stood inside, waiting with whatever degree of patience she could muster for him to enter.

'Yo.' he sighed, walking inside. As the door seized closed behind them he began to walk towards towards the cage elevator, Asuka soon followed.

The elevator began its descent.

...

..

.

* * *

'Do we have a visual yet?'

'Yup.'

A grainy picture flicked up onto the big screen, a feed from an exterior camera.

The Angel drew some gasps at first, but after a while the thing simply pushed laughter across the room.

'My god!'. Someone shouted, 'It's a giant-'

* * *

'Dick.' He coughed, swatting dust from his pants. 'Ah man, did you see that thing?'

Asuka looked across, allowing a small grin.

'Yeah man, it's hard to miss something that's essentially a giant-'

* * *

'Recycled joke.' Akagi sighed.

'What?'

She sighed even deeper, putting her hand into her cheek.

'Haven't you been reading at all?'

'What?'

'Yeah...' she paused, chin scratching, 'I don't know where that came from... Oh... There you are.'

She spun the chair she was sitting in, and looked across the black tiles towards the two pilots.

'Well,' she motioned with her hands.

'Well?'

'Well...' the motions became slightly larger.

'I don't know... What?'

'Well?'

'Uh...'

'Well...'

'What? Just tell me!'

'Get going!'

'Whatever.'

* * *

Fear was the word of the hour.

As it was every hour in a world where an end to the means was the only certainty. Also He'd noticed a pimple or two pop up across his face.

Terrifying, was the prospect of that dreaded thing which plagues so many with so little distinction and prejudice.

Acne.

His heart began to thud in his chest as he noticed a new spot in the LCL's surface. Could it be happening to him? His "perfect" complexion, might it be coming to an end?

'Egad man.' He exclaimed, recoiling from his reflection. But it soon faded, and he was left to his own devices.

'What's become of me...'

He flicked to his left, comm. had been opened for some inexplicable yet convenient reason.

Cough cough.

'Excuse me?'

There was no reaction from the other end, only an image of black shtuff and tings.

Awfully boring.

'Hello?'

'Hey kiddo.'

Gendo's face sunk into view. He was haggard, tired. A small bush of stubble grew from skin he normally kept clean shaven. In the harsh light he only looked worse.

It was turning into quite a creepy beard.

'Sorry about this, won't bother you any longer.'

The comm. shut off.

'That was interestin-'

Beside two destroyed, and subsequently sealed off shafts a third and fourth ignited with sparks sending one surprised and another, not surprised, through the earth towards what can only be described as an uncomfortable, gory and painful grave.

Funky junk.

'Hey Asuka.'

The shoot still had at least fifteen seconds of peace left, ample time for a wee chat.

'Wup?'

'How many Angels were there before I came along?'

She paused, wasting away four out of eleven remaining seconds.

'I dunno... four?'

'Cool.'

The city rushed into view, showering the unpleasant ashy stench of asphalt, which is not tarmac, nor is it a tire.

Or anything else. Just asphalt.

'Where's he at?'

He looked over, the red other one was crouching next to him. It passed his mind that if they were playing a video game and this was all some massive conspiracy, no one would be any wiser.

But that is preposterous, of course.

'I dunno.'

Asuka sighed.

'Why don't we just ask.'

'Where is he then?'

'No not me... again. HQ.'

'Ah.' he pressed an invisible button. A small screen popped up. 'Hi, where is he?'

For a second there was no reply, until a glassed face popped into the frame.

'About two blocks in the way that you're not looking'

'Ta.'

* * *

_Kill, eat, destroy._

_Killllllll. Eat. Destroy._

_Kiiiiiiiill. Eaaataat destroy-_

_Sigh._

_Who're ya kidding mate? It's like mam always said, you weren't cut out to be a monster. You should invest in an education. Damn, I wish I'd listened to dad when he told me to stick at my algebra, but all that x! and -log junk just got to me._

_And now look at me. Digging into the ground so I can bloody well end this whole charade. What a downwards fall for a Harvard scholar._

_Oh well, can't be helped, might as well keep digging._

'Hey! Ball sack!'

_Well that's not very nice._

He turned.

'Yeah you, dick!'

_Well now, that's a wee bit uncalled for._

He reared his head, charging for some sort of blast from the tip, and the sky came tumbling down.

* * *

'What is that?'

'Uh... Unsure.'

A cloud of blackness had descended around the two Evas. A rather large cloud on the ground, but the sort of cloud all the other clouds would laugh at for being small were it in the sky.

Like a white man in China.

Lol jk, I'm white.

'I would say it was some kind of cloud, wouldn't you?'

'Mmm, yes, indeed.'

'Quite.'

She blew her bubble pipe.

* * *

Of all the times to get a boner...

'God Dammit.' He forced it down, 'What the hell man?'

'Hey, does it ever talk back?'

A comm. channel had popped open. He could feel his cheeks reddening as he turned to look, plugsuit tenting where it shouldn't.

'How are you doing this?'

The pale boy smiled.

'Can't help it.'

'You can't help looking at fifteen year olds with stiffies? Jesus dude!'

The pale boy pursed his lips. Holding up a finger.

'Not what I meant.'

'Yeah, sure. Fuck off.'

'No... I think I'll stay.'

'No dude, just... Piss off out of here.'

'Nope.'

'C'mon man.'

'Nah.'

'You're lucky I'm stuck here.'

He cocked his head, raising an eyebrow.

'Wait, am I even awake?'

'Yes,'

'So, why is it black outside? Angel do something?'

'I don't think the Angel, Phalleus is his name, did this.'

'Phalleus.'

'You know, as in...'

He motioned with his face, the boy caught the drift halfway down and latched on with his teeth.

'Ah...'

'Yup.'

'So what now?'

'Just chill out an-'

There was a flash, lights flickered as a sillhouette appeared in the black cloud, stumbling towards him.

'Well that's eerie. Asuka, you see that?'

Nothing.

'Asuka.'

'Ugh,' she sounded exasperated, 'yes I see it.'

'Cool.' he put a finger to his lips and leant forwards. 'What is it.'

'I dunno. Listen, imma mute you. This is a bit too much.'

'What is?'

'Just- Agh-'

Her hand moved forward and the feed cut out.

'What's up with that?'

The small screen once again popped up.

'Probably that.'

He followed the pale hand with his eyes, until he found himself gazing out of the window.

Two white eyes.

'Well that's a tad unnerving. Say, can you do anything with the Eva or do you just watch?'

'I can put up diagnostics...'

The screen flashed technicolor, before being replaced by simple red, and then to a nova as the eyes disappeared and the cloud lifted, leaving the feed to adjust to an overwhelming amount of light. Phalleus lay in pieces, core shattered.

'Well gee. That was easy.'

He took a step forward.

Asuka flashed up, 'I wouldn't-'

Too late.

**BIG BOOM.**

'I swear to god...'

Once again pain tore throughout a human form with the light that lit it. It came in waves and rays, shooting through, there but not.

'Uh...'

He was too busy gritting his teeth with the_ drama_ to reply, but he looked up regardless.

'You're gonna hurt tomorrow. Aren't ya.'

* * *

_Tomorrow came. An empty house echoed with a single noise._

_Cellos were fairly hard to come by, especially when there was nobody to make them, so you can imagine the surprise of finding one in a broom closet in the back of the apartment._

_There wasn't much really, he wasn't thinking about that sort of stuff._

_He was more thinking about the different clouds and colours of cloud around the world that he'd been exploring._

_So now he simply sat and played._

_Pooh._

* * *

Tomorrow came, he hurt.

He could hear a mentally synthesized voice telling him over and over.

_You're gonna hurt tomorrow._

Is that what he said? Gah, it's too early.

'Ack.'

He was lying, as you do, on the ground, covered by his own jacket and pretty much everything else that could be worn.

'I need a bed.'

Or was there a bed beneath the mountain of laudable laundry?'

They were nice clothes.

'Dude. You.'

He pointed, PenPen stopped halfway through the door way.

He made a chopping motion.

'Get me some water or I'll eat you.'

_Do penguins even know English?_

Soon Asuka appeared in that same doorway.

'Did Misato come?'

'Neow.' he noed.

'Well that's a bit odd.'

'Kaji's home tho','

Kaji slumped into the doorway, leaving barely any room for anything else.

None really.

'Sup.'

'Hi.'

'Okay.'

He did a faux salute, walking away as he did so.

'Yup.'

There was a clatter, a shout, and a shatter.

Apparently penguins do know English.

* * *

'Cancel today's tests.'

Such calls were not always uncommon, regardless, the nature of this one was rather odd. Akagi sighed.

'Why is that?'

'The Evas are too dangerous to use under the current circumstances.'

'So? Never stopped us before.'

'Just do it, one's already passed on, we can't afford another.'

'I see.'

'You're doing me a favour here.'

Gendo hung up.

'Hmph.' Ritsuko pocketed the phone.

'Liar.'

* * *

**End.**

**?**

* * *

**Yeah.**

* * *

It was a pact made in silence. Unknowing eyes sent messages as fates were sealed in an envelope addressed to beyond knowing. It had been a hunch, then an inkling, then a suspicion, then an investigation.

It was set up. A glitch that would end two lives and save millions.

'How'd I get sucked into this?'

Maya sighed. She didn't know what she'd done, she couldn't, she didn't have the temperament.

'I swear, I need a vacation.'


End file.
